1 




^^JYZULILZl^^SS^I ''WlllTlTCo 



LETTERS 

OP THE 

BRITISH SPY. 

BY WILLIAM WIRT, ESQ. 

TENTH EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED. 
TO WHICH IS PREFIXED, 

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OP THE AUTHOR. 



NKW-YORK: 
HARPER & BROTH F.»s ««>, CLIFF- STREET. 




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1832, by 

J. & J. Harper, 
in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-Yojk 






BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

OF 

WILLIAM WIRT. 



In reprinting a portion of the literary produc- 
tions of Mr. Wirt, the pubUshers have thought 
that a few particulars might not be unacceptable 
to the reader, of an individual who has long 
been familiar to the public in other positions 
very different from that of the writer or mere 
man of letters. They are indebted, in great 
part, for the opportunity of giving these details, 
to materials collected bj^ another hand, some time 
since, and for aaother purpose. The present 
occasion may excuse a sketch which other obvi- 
ous considerations, however, may render some- 
what meager. Biography has a delicate office 
while her subjects are yet hving, as she may be 
accused of flattery on the one hand, and, on the 
other, may be thought to misplace and mistime 
the impartial censure which she, no less than 
History, owes to truth, when, hke the Egyptian 
tribunal, she sits in judgment on the dead. 



10 BIOGRAPHY OP 

With regard to the subject himself, the mind 
most conscious of integrity, and the most happy 
in deserved success, may naturally shrink from 
that scrupulous analysis which is necessary to 
a full deUneation of it. It is as naturally averse 
to the relation of many things, trivial in them- 
selves, but characteristic, and which on that 
account are eagerly sought when the actors are 
no more, though till then they may fail to excite 
curiosity or interest in the public. Contempo- 
rary actors have their sensibilities also ; a con- 
sideration which, in tracing the competitions 
and conflicts through which an individual has 
wrought his way to honour and influence, may 
require many sketches to be withheld, much of 
the colouring softened, and much of what may 
be called the material action suppressed. 

It is not so much the brief memoir designed 
in the following pages that leads to these sug- 
gestions, as the observation how often they are 
neglected in the license of the press and the rage 
of anecdote. But even in this hasty sketch, it is 
evident how many passages of a life somewhat 
various and busy, and how many incidents col- 
lected by his intimates, from an acute observer 
and lively describer, must thus be excluded, 
though at the expense of the vivacity of the 



WILLIAM WIRT. 11 

whole picture. At some future day, and by 
some happier hand, a more minute delineation 
might be profitably exhibited of singular merit 
gradually achieving its own reward; a career 
the more interesting as descriptive of a course of 
fortune familiar, though not peculiar indeed, to 
our happy country, where native talent has a 
fair field, and where its acquisitions of honour 
are more unquestionably the fruit of its own 
intrinsic vigour. 

In point of pecuniary circumstances and early 
education, the subject of our memoir had what 
may be reckoned middling advantages, consider- 
ing the aspect of our country in both particulars 
at that early day. His parents left him some 
patrimony, small indeed, but which was suflS- 
cient to procure him the usual instruction of the 
grammar-school. He was born at Bladensburg, 
in Maryland, on the 8th of November, 1772, and 
was the youngest of six children of Jacob and 
Henrietta Wiit. His father was a Swiss, his 
mother a German ; the first died when he was 
yet an infant, the latter when he was but eight 
years old. An orphan at this tender age, he 
passed into the family and guardianship of his 
uncle, Jasper Wirt, who, as well as his wife, was 
J. Swiss by birth, and then resided near the same 



]2 BIOGRAPHY OP 

village, not far, we think, from the Washington 
Toad. Mr. Wirt retains very vivid impressions 
of the character of his aunt, which are worth 
preserving, both as an amiable picture of a pious 
and constant temper, and as an evidence of early- 
observation in the relater. He has always spoken 
of her as having a cast of character worthy of 
the land of William Tell. She was tall and 
rather large framed, with a fair complexion, and 
a face that must have been handsome in youth, 
Her kindliness of temper seems to have made its 
usual indelible impression on sensitive and hvely 
childhood, whose httle errors often require that 
tender disposition to excuse, which is sure to be 
repaid by its warm gratitude. With thii allow- 
ance for the weakness of others, she s^ms to 
have had none of her own, possessing a fine 
mind, and an uncommon mixture of firmness 
and sensibility. She was very religious, and 
a great reader of pious books, of which one^ an 
old folio German Bible or family expositor, in 
its binding of wood or black leather, with brass 
clasps, was held in venerable remembrance by 
the boy, struck, no doubt, by the air and voice 
of devotion and deep feeling with which she was 
accustomed to read the consolatory t olume aloud. 
A little incident exhibits a touch of heroism in 



WILLIAM WIRT. 13 

her not unworthy to be related. A thunderstorm 
came up one evening unusually violent, and as 
the lightning became more terrific, the aunt got 
down her Bible, and began to read aloud. The 
women were exceedingly frightened, especially 
when one appalling flash struck a tree in the 
yard, and drove a large spUnter towards them. 
They flew from their chairs into the darkest cor- 
ners of the room. The aunt alone remained firm 
in her seat, at a table in the middle of the floor, 
and noticed the peal in no other way than by 
the increased energy of her voice. This contrast 
struck the young observer, then not more than 
six years of age, with so much force, that he 
describes the scene as fresh before him to the 
present moment, and as giving him an early 
impression of the superiour dignity with which 
firmness and piety invest the character. 

Most lively boys remember pretty faithfully 
the picturesque scenes oi incidents of their child- 
hood, the village green, the haunted house, the 
first advent of the rope-dancer, and those " Cir- 
censian games" with which they are as univer- 
sally captivated as were the Roman People 
themselves. The personages also that figured 
in the early scene, are remembered with some 
general notion of their being venerable or ridicu- 



14 BIOGRAPHY OF 

lous, good-natured or cross, in the reputation of 
the neighbourhood, or in the apprehension of the 
urchin himself. Our future jurisprudent might 
be thought to be born for a painter or a drama- 
tist, to judge from his oddly minute memory Oi 
localities, persons and costume. The village of 
Bladensburg was at this time the most active 
and busthng place of trade in Maryland. It 
stands in the midst of a tobacco countiy, and 
was then the great place of export for the state. 
There was a large "tobacco inspection" there, 
several rich resident merchants, and some Scotch 
and other foreign factors, with large capitals. 
During this its " high and palmy state," a lot in 
it was worth the price of three of the best lots in 
Georgetown, Belhaven, (now Alexandria,) or 
Baltimore. It is now a decayed, ruinous ham- 
let, through which the late Attorney-General of 
the United States has often passed, in his profes- 
sional journeys, with those natural emotions, no 
doubt, which such a spot, revisited under such 
circumstances, might excite in minds of less 
poetical sensibility than his. But if there is a 
complacent satisfaction to be envied on earth, it 
is that which must often have arisen in his mind 
in retracing this scene of his childhood. At that 
day the free empire in which he was to be aa 



WILLIAM WIRT. 15 

ornament and a conspicuous actor, had not even 
an existence ; and little did those foresee, who 
caressed him as an apt, imitative boy, that on 
hills almost within sight of his humble patrimo- 
nial roof, proud domes were to arise in which he 
was to discharge the functions of the highest 
legal office of the republic, and sit in council on 
its most momentous concerns. When a few 
years afterward it was a question with his guar- 
dian whether to continue his education with the 
small means devolved from his father, an ex- 
pression was let fall by his worthy and not undis- 
cerning aunt, involuntarily prophetic. In urging 
that he should be continued at school, "When 
I look at that dear child," said she, " he hardly 
seems one of us, and I weep when I think of 
him." They were doubtless tears of joyful pride, 
the full measure of which it is as natural and 
frequent a wish, as it is often a vain one, that 
the tender guardians of youthful promise might 
oftener live to feel. 

In his seventh year he was sent from home 
to school; a melancholy era in the memory of 
most boys. There was a classical school in 
Georgetown, eight miles from Bladensburg, un- 
der the direction of a Mr. Rogers, and the boy 
was placed to board at the house of a Quaker of 



16 BIOGRAPHY OP 

the name of Scholfield, who occupied a small log 
house on Bridge-street. His wife was a kind 
creature, whose good nature was touched by the 
grief of the child at his first exile from home 
and displayed itself in many characteristic topic!» 
of consolation, remembered to this day by a tem 
per naturally sensitive and grateful. Among 
other little expedients b}^ which the good-naturec^ 
woman sought to allay the burst of boyish sor 
row, she had recourse to the story of Joseph in 
Egypt. She made him enter into the distresses 
of the son and his aged father in their separation, 
and so forget his own ; insinuating that, as the 
separation had brought Joseph to great honours, 
so his might turn out equally fortunate. 

When the boy grew to be a man, he went it 
see kind Mrs. Scholfield, and a warmer meeting 
seldom takes place between mother and son. 
Schools for teaching the classics were rare in 
those days, and Mr. Rogers's contained quite a 
small army of boys and young men, of whom 
Richard Brent, since a member of Congress 
from Yirginia, was one. Our tyro remained at 
it less than a year, and never had much pleasure 
in recollecting it, perhaps fi'om some injudicious 
rigour, which he thought had the effect of break- 
ing his spirit. He was transferred to a classical 



WILLIAM WIRT. 17 

school in Charles county, Maryland, about forty 
miles from Bladensburg, and boarded with an 
Did widow lady of the name of Love. The 
school was kept by one Hatch Dent, in the ves- 
try-house of Newport church. Here, being a 
lively boy, he was a great favourite in the family, 
and seems to have been as happy as a boy can 
be, separated from the natural objects of his 
affection, and with nothing to mar his pleasure 
except going to school and getting tasks in the 
holydays, the latter of which seems to have been 
an ingenious contrivance of our forefathers to de- 
form the elysium of vacations by an early hint of 
the transitoriness of pleasure. In these changes 
from place to place, he appears to have been 
fortunate in finding kind friends ; a circumstance 
which, as it arose out of a natural goodness of 
disposition, accompanied him through hfe. 

Mr. Dent was a most excellent man, very 
good-tempered, who either found no occasion, 
or, with the exception of a single application of 
the ferrule, no incUnation, to punish his young 
pupil, who in two years advanced as far as 
Caesar's Commentaries, though perhaps without 
being properly grounded in his author. Here, 
as at Georgetown, there was quite a crowd of 

boys, and several young men fully grown. 

2* 



16 BIOGRAPHY OP 

\nmmg the latter was Alexander Campbell, who 
afterward became well known in Virginia as 
an orator, and still more for his untimely and 
melancholy death. This accomplished and un- 
fortunate gentleman, of whose argument in th*». 
case of Ray and Garnett, reported in Washing- 
ton's Reports, Mr. Pendleton, the President of 
the Court of Appeals, is said to have spoken as 
the most perfect model of forensic discussion he 
had ever heard, was then from eighteen to 
twenty years of age, manly and dignified in his 
deportment, and of a grave and thoughtfiil air, 
occasionall}'-, only, relaxed into a gayer mood, 
and with that remarkable tremulous eye by 
which others of his family were also distinguish- 
ed. He had just gained the prize of eloquence 
in the school at Greorgetown, and his manners 
perhaps as much as his age procured him from 
the school-boys at Mr. Dent's, the title of Mr. 
Campbell. He began his career at the bar some 
years after Chief Justice Marshall and Judge 
Washington, who must themselves have com- 
menced practice after the Revolutionary War. 
Edmund Randolph began a little before, or per- 
haps just at the breaking out of the war, and 
Patrick Henry about fifteen years eaiiier. All 
these celebrated men were still at the bar when 



WILLIAM WIRT. 19 

Mr. Campbell appeared at it ; he was engaged 
frequently in the same causes with them, and it 
b a high praise to say that even among them he 
was a distinguished man. Mr. Wirt has said 
of him, "he did not wield the Herculean club of 
Marshall, nor did his rhetoric exhibit the Gothic 
magnificence of Henry ; but his quiver was fur- 
nished with arrows polished to the finest point, 
that were launched with Apollonian skill and 
grace." He was yet at the bar of the superiour 
courts of Virginia, when Mr. Wirt had grown up 
and commenced the practice of law in the upper 
part of that state, and was held to stand in the 
first rank of genius. The latter adds, " Some 
of the most beautiful touches of eloquence I have 
ever heard, were echoes from Campbell which 
reached us in our mountains." This promising 
career was cut short by a lamentable death. He 
left a whimsical will, in which, among other 
odd things, was a request that no stone might 
be laid on his grave, for the reason that, if a 
stone were placed on every grave, there would 
be no earth left for tillage. 

From Mr. Dent's, the subject of our memoir 
was removed in his eleventh year, to a very 
flourishing school kept by the Rev. James Hunt, 
a Presbyterian clergyman in Montgomery county, 



20 BIOGRAPHY OF 

Maiyland. At this school he remained till it 
was broken up, that is, till 1787, and here, dur- 
ing a period of four years, he received the prin- 
cipal part of his education, being carried through 
all the Latin and Greek classics then usually 
taught in grammar-schools, and instructed in 
geography and some of the branches of the 
mathematics, including arithmetic, trigonometry, 
surveying, and the first six books of Euclid's 
Elements. During the last two years of the 
time, he boarded with Mr. Hunt. This gentle- 
man was a graduate of Princeton college, of 
some learning, fond of conversation and reading, 
and when engaged in the latter, of evenings, 
would sometimes read to the boys any interesting 
passages of the book before him. One of his 
favourites was Josephus, in which our youth 
was as much taken with the account of the his- 
torian's defence of the fortified town of Jotapata, 
as Kotzebue tells us he was captivated in like 
manner by the story of the siege of Jerusalem. 
Our clergyman, who in his suit of black velvet 
was quite a stately and graceful person, had a 
pair of globes and a telescope, with the aid of 
which, and by conversation, he gave his pupils 
some smattering of astronomy. Added to these 
was an electrical machine, with which he took 



WILLIAM WIRT. 21 

pleasure in making experiments, to the enter- 
tainment and instruction not only of his scholars, 
but of the ladies and gentlemen of the neighbour- 
hood. But the most important part of his pos- 
sessions was a good general library, in which 
our youth, now a lad of twelve or thirteen, first 
contracted a passion for reading, or fed it rather, 
it being first kindled by " Guy, Earl of War- 
wick," which he obtained from a carpenter in the 
employ of Mr. Hunt, and further fanned by a 
fragment of Peregrine Pickle, neither of which 
famous works, probably, was found in the library 
of the reverend preceptor. Those which made 
the nearest approach to them were the British 
Dramatists, which our reader devoured with 
insatiable appetite, and, having exhausted them, 
was driven from necessity on the works of Pope 
and Addison, and then on Home's Elements of 
Criticism. As this reading was wholly a volun- 
tary, and somewhat furtive affair on his part, he 
drifted along through the library pretty much 
hke the hero of Waverley and the historian of 
Waverley himself, as chance or caprice directed, 
mastering nothing perhaps, yet increasing his 
Btock of ideas, and deriving some cultivation of 
taste from the exercise ; a sort of reading much 
too captivating and absorbing to the youthful 



^ BIOGRAPHY OF 

mind not to impregnate it with thought, and fit 
it, at all events, for better directed efforts ; as the 
shedding from our forests prepares a richer soil 
for the hand of regular cultivation. The dis- 
covery that Pope began to compose at twelve 
years of age, begat in our student the same sort 
of emulation as the like example in Cowley did 
in Pope. He reproached himself for his back- 
wardness when he was now already thirteen. 
The first attempt was a little discouraging. It 
was in verse, and he was embarrassed as usual 
by the awkward alternative of sacrificing the 
rhytlim to the thought, or (which is the usual 
preference in such cases,) the thought to the 
rhythm. He came to the disappointing conclu- 
sion that he was no poet, but indemnified him- 
self by more lucky efforts in prose, one of which 
falling into the hands of Mr. Hunt, he expressed 
his favourable surprise, and exhorted the adven- 
turer to persevere, who thus encouraged became 
a confirmed reader and author. 

One of these juvenile essays was engendered 
by a school incident, and was a piece of revenge, 
more legitimate than schoolboy invention is apt 
to inflict when sharpened by wrongs real or 
imaginary. There was an usher at the school, 
and this usher, who was more learned and me- 



WILLIAM WIRT. 23 

thodical than even-tempered, was one morning 
delayed in the customary routine by the absence 
of his principal scholar, who was young Wirl 
himself. In his impatience he went often to the 
door, and espying some boys clinging like a 
knot of bees to a cheriy-tree not far off, he con 
eluded that the expected absentee was of the 
number, and nursed his wrath accordingly. 
The truth was, that the servant of a neighbour 
with whom Wirt was boarded at the time, had 
gone that morning to mill, and the indispensable 
breakfast had been delayed by his late return. 
This apology, however, was urged in vain on 
the usher, who charged in corroboration the 
plunder of the cherry-tree; and though this was 
as stoutly as truly rejoined to be the act of an 
Efiglish school hard by, the recitation of mas- 
ter Wirt proceeded under ver}'- threatening prog- 
nostics of storm. The lesson was in Cicero, 
and at every hesitation of the reciter, the elo- 
quent volume, brandished by the yet chafing 
tutor, descended within an inch of his head, 
without quailing his facetiousness however, for 
he said archly, "take care, or you'll kill me." 
We have heard better timed jests since from the 
dexterous orator, for the next slip brought a blow 
in good earnest, which being as forcible as if 



24 BIOGRAPHY OF 

Logic herself, with her "closed fist," had dealt 
it, felled our hero to the ground. " I'll pay you 
for this, if I live," said the fallen champion, as 
he rose from the field. " Pay me, will you ?" 
said the usher, quite furious ; " you will never 
live to do that." " Yes, I will," said the boy. 

Our youth was an author, be it remembered, 
and that is not a race to take an injury, much 
less an affront, calmly. The quill, too, was a 
fair weapon against an usher, and by way of 
vent to his indignation at this and other con- 
tinued outrages, but with no view to what so 
seriously fell out from it in furtherance of his 
revenge, he indited some time afterward an 
ethical essay on Anger. In this, after due exhi- 
bition of its unhappy effects, which, it may be, 
would have enlightened Seneca, though he has 
himself professed to treat the same subject, he 
reviewed those relations and functions of life 
most exposed to the assaults of this Fury. A 
parent with an undutiful son, said our moralist, 
must often be very angry ; — a master with his 
servant, an inn-keeper with his guests ; — but it 
is an usher that must the oftenest be vexed by 
this bad passion, and, right or wrong, find him- 
self in a terrible rage ; and so he went on, in a 
manner very edifying, and very descriptive of 



WILLIAM WIRT. 25 

the case, character and manner of the expounder 
of Cicero. Well pleased with his work, our 
author found a most admiring reader in an elder 
boy, who, charmed with the mischief as much 
as the wit of the occasion, pronounced it a most 
excellent performance, and very fit for a Satur- 
day morning's declamation. In vain did our 
wit object strenuously the dangers of this mode 
of publication. The essay was "got by heart," 
and declaimed in the presence of the school and 
of the usher himself, who, enraged at the satire, 
demanded the writer, otherwise threatening the 
declaimer with the rod. His magnanimity was 
not proof against this, and he betrayed the 
incognito of our autlior, who happened the same 
evening to be in liis garret when master usher, 
the obnoxious satire in hand, came into the 
apartment below to lay his complaint before his 
principal. Mr. Hunt's house was one of those 
one-story rustic mansions yet to be seen in Ma- 
ryland, where the floor of the attic, without the 
intervention of ceiling, forms the roof of the 
apartment below, so that the culprit could easily 
be the hearer, and even the partial spectator, of 
the inquisition held on his case. " Let us see 
this offensive hbel," said the preceptor, and awful 
were the first silent moments of its perusal, 

d 



26 BIOGRAPHY OP 

which were broken, first by a suppressed titter, 
and finally, to the mighty relief of the listener, 
by a loud burst of laughter. "Pooh! pooh! 

Mr. , this is but the sally of a lively boy, 

and best say no more about it ; besides that, in 
foro co7iscienti(B, we can hardly find him guilty 
of the ' publication.' " This was a victory ; and 
when Mr. Hunt left the room, the conqueror, 
tempted to sing his "lo triumphe" in some song 
allusive to the country of the discomfited party, 
who w^as a foreigner, was put to flight by the 
latter's rushing furiously into the attic, and 
snatching from under his pillow some hickories, 
the fasces of his office, and inflicting some smart 
strokes on the flying satirist, who did not stay, 
like Yoltaire, to write a receipt for them. The 
usher left the school in dudgeon not long after- 
ward, like the worthy in the doggerel rhymes, — 

" The hero who did 'sist upon't 
He wouldn't be deputy to Mr. Hunt." 

Many years after, the usher and his scholar 
met again. Age and poverty had overtaken the 
poor man, and his former pupil had the oppor- 
tunity of showing him some kindnesses which 
were probably not lessened by the recollection of 
this unpremeditated revenge. j 

Another little incident that occurred at this 



WILLIAM WIRT. 27 

school had some effect in shaping the fortunes 
of the subject of this sketch. Mr. Hunt was in 
the habit of giving his boys one day in the court 
week at Montgomery court-house, to go and 
hear the lawyers plead. There were then 
some distinguished men at that bar, and among 
them one who had just commenced practice, the 
late William H. Dorsey. This was a great treat 
to the boys, wlio made their way on foot, earl^' 
of a morning, to the court-house, about four 
miles ; took their position in some gallery or box, 
from which they could hear and see all that 
passed ; and looked and listened with all the 
greedy attention of young rustics at their first 
visit to a theatre. The struggles of young Dorsey 
with the veterans opposed to him, found most 
favour in the eyes of these exoterick disciples of 
the law. He was fluent, keen, animated and 
dexterous, and as often the foiler as the foiled. 
This sport was so delightful to them that they 
determined to have a court of their own, and 
Wirt was appointed to draft a constitution and 
body of laws, which he reported accordingly, 
with an apologetic letter prefixed. In this court 
he was a practitioner of eminence. The serm-an- 
nual examinations and exhibitions at the school 
afforded another theatre of competition. On 



28 BIOGRAPHY OP 

these oscasions they deUvered speeches and acted 
plays, and as Mr. Hunt had high notions of ora- 
tory, and duly instructed them in tone and ges- 
ture, and as there were ahvays large audiences 
of gentlemen and ladies, the occasion was full 
of excitement and emulation. Wirt bore off one 
of the prizes of eloquence at these exhibitions ; 
his speech was a prologue of Farquhar's, adapt- 
ed to the occasion by Mr. Hunt, and, young as 
he was, he could not help suspecting that his 
reverend teacher's partiality for his own work 
had some share in the award of the preference. 
There was another exercise at this school, now, 
we believe, fallen into disuse, at least in America. 
This was " capping verses," as it is called, — a 
sort of game of the memory to which we suspect 
the orators of St. Stephen's chapel are as much 
indebted for the quotations from the classics in 
vogue there, as to any warm poetic sensibility. 
In this exercise, which is not an unuseful one, 
the boys became at length so well supplied 
with the appropriate weapons, that the venerable 
teacher had to close it himself, which he was 
wont to do with Virgil's "Claudite jam rivos, 
pueri, sat prata biberunt." 

When Mr. Hunt's school was broken up, his 
pupil was but fifteen, and liis little patrimony 



WILLIAM WIRT. 29 

being insufficient either to support him at college 
or meet the expense of a professional education 
he was exposed to the danger of an idle residence 
in the village of Bladensburg, under no other 
control than that which his guardian thought 
proper to exercise, which practically was no con- 
trol at all. From the dangers of this situation 
the "constitution" and prefatory letter before 
mentioned, chanced to be instrumental in deli- 
vering him. Among the boys at school when ^^^ 
that juvenile trifle was produced, was Ninian 
Edwards, the late governor of Illinois, the son 
of Mr. Benjamin Edwards, who resided in Mont- 
gomery county, and subsequently represented j^ 
that district in Congress. On his return home, 
young Edwards took with him the aforesaid 
constitution and letter for the amusement of his 
father; and that gentleman fancied that he saw 
something of promise in the letter which deserved 
a better fate than the young author's seemed 
likely to be. On the evidence of this little 
essay, for he had never seen him, and learn- 
ing that he had completed the course of the 
grammar-school, and had not the means to push 
his education further ; perhaps, too, on the fa- 
vourable report of his school-fellows, he kindly 
wrote to invite him to take up his residence m 



so BIOGRAPHY OP 

his family, where, he said, he could prepare the 
writer's son and nephews for college, while he 
could at the same time continue his studies with 
the aid of the small library there. The invita- 
tion was accepted, and fortunately so, it being 
Mr. Wirt's conviction, often expressed, that it 
was to this gentleman's pecuUar and happy cast 
of character that he owed most of what may be 
praiseworthy in his own. Mr. Edwards's educa- 
tion was hmited ; but he had that natural vigour 
of mind which more than atones for its defects. 
He had found leisure, nevertheless, amidst his 
occupations as planter and merchant, to acquaint 
himself with the historians, from whom he had 
imbibed as lively a veneration for the Catos 
and Brutuses as Algernon Sydney himself 
His own person and presence had much of the 
heroic character. To these he added a polite 
and easy manner, which, though a little stately 
abroad, was sportive and facetious in private. 
This gentleman, so well adapted to win the 
regard of a young man, while his character pre- 
sented a model very proper to be imitated, was 
also a natural orator, unaffected, but with all 
that unction which natural benignity imparts. 
On some occasion that concerned the interests of 
his country, he pronounced a maiden speech in 



WILLIAM WIRT. 31 

the assembly of Maryland, which was so well 
received by the patriot, Samuel Chase, that he 
came across the house, and warmly congratula- 
ted the speaker. He had a melodious and flexi- 
ble voice, his enunciation was distinct and cleai', 
and his language astonishingly copious, correct 
and appropriate. A still better point than these 
for forming a young mind, was the candour and 
moderation of his way of thinking. Intellectual 
arrogance, he often took occasion to say, was the 
strongest proof of ignorance and imbecility ; and 
though an independent thinker, with bold and 
original conceptions, he hked to draw out those 
about him to combat his opinions. One dwells 
with satisfaction on characters of this cast, of 
which our revolutionary age, like all other great 
and stirring crises, was profuse. Indeed, Mr. 
Edwards added to the properties we have de- 
scribed, the ftill inspiration of that remarkable 
period ; and having been conversant with its 
scenes and its actors, felt that warm and high 
patriotism which the difficulties and the happy 
issue of the struggle were equally adapted to 
create. 

This kind and judicious man, whose share in 
forming the character of his young friend, and 
giving his fortunes a favourable turn, has led us 



32 BIOGRAPHY OF 

to speak of him more at large, took great pams 
to draw out the qualities and talents of the youth 
from the cloud of a natural bashfulness. This 
timidity was so great that he could scarcely get 
through a sentence intelligibly ; and to correct 
this bias of temper, his friend endeavoured to 
raise his estimate of himself, kindly reminding 
him of his natural advantages, and that, in the 
common phrase, the game of his fortune was in 
his own hand. He pointed his attention to 
many men who had emerged from an obscure 
condition by force of their own exertions ; efforts 
to which our political institutions were especially 
propitious, as they threw open the lists of honour 
to generous emulation. " Mr. Dorsey," said he, 
" whom you so much admire, and Mr. Pinkney, 
whom you have not seen, but who is more wor- 
thy still of your admiration, are making their 
own way to distinction, under as great disadvan- 
tages as any you have to encounter." These 
encouragements and assurances were regarded 
bv the youth as kindly overcharging his advi- 
ser's real estimate of him, and as a kind of pious 
fraud, intended for his good ; till many years 
after, when he was chancellor at Williamsburg, 
in Virginia, he received a long letter from his old 
friend, reminding him of these predictions, and 



AVILLIAM WIRT. 33 

adding that he considered his career as only 
begun. 

Mr. Wirt's enunciation was at this time of 
Hfe thick and hasty, and he was alternately 
counselled and rallied on this defect by his 
friend, whose discernment and native goodness 
of heart, seem equally to have engaged him in 
developing the mind and manners of the young 
man, and urging him upon a career befitting his 
natural good parts. As this impeded utterance 
arose chiefly from the bashfulness which Mr. 
Edwards, as we have said, took such kind 
means to counteract, the latter, among other ex- 
amples of encouragement, used to tell the story 
of his own debut in the Maryland Assembly, 
when, as he declared, his alarm spread such a 
mist before his eyes that he spoke, as it were, i? 
the dark, and was surprised to find from Mr. 
Chase's congratulation, that he had even been 
talking sense. He at the same time directed 
our youth's attention to historical studies, which 
had formed no part of his reading in his miscel- 
laneous and accidental selections from Mr. 
Hunt's library. 

Under the roof of Mr. Edwards, or in his 
immediate neighbourhood, the subject of our 
memoir remained about twenty months, in the 



»?4 RTOGRAPIIV OP 

occupations already described. These increased 
his famiharity with the Latin and Greek classics, 
and led him to exercises of his own pen, w^hich 
often served for the declamations of the boys 
under his instruction. Thus, at a most critical 
age, and under circumstances which but for Mr. 
Edwards, might have plunged him into that 
idle career which is often the consequence of dis- 
couraging prospects, he was engaged in a course 
of life highly favourable to his mental habits, 
while in the lessons and example of a valuable 
friend, he found not less propitious impulses to 
his morals, and to raising his hopes and views in 
life. It were ascribing too much sway to mere 
accident in " shaping our ends," not to interpose 
a remark which these anecdotes may have 
already suggested. Doubtless the merit was not 
small which could awake so friendly and tender 
a concern ; and must, under any circumstances, 
have attracted regard, and found efficient friends. 
Men seldom achieve more than they deserve ; 
a proposition for the most part denied by those 
only who in some way have been wanting to 
themselves. 

In this year, 1789, shoAving some symptoms 
of what was feared to be consumption, he was 
advised, by liis physician, to pass the winter in 



WILLIAM WIllT. 35 

a southern climate. He went accordingly on 
horseback, as far as Augusta, in Georgia, and 
remained there till the following spring. On his 
return, he commenced the study of law at Mont- 
gomery court-house, with Mr. William P. Hunt, 
the son of his old preceptor; this he pursued 
subsequently with Mr. Thomas Swann, now the 
United States' Attorney for the District of Co- 
lumbia, on whose application, aided by his good 
offices, he obtained a license for practice in the 
autumn of 1792. In the same autumn he re- 
moved to Culpepper court-house, in Virginia, 
and commenced his professional career there, 
being at the time only twenty years of age. 

His health had now become confirmed, and 
he entered with the advantage of a vigorous 
constitution, on a profession whose toilsomeness 
renders that advantage hardly less essential to 
splendid success, than, in the opinion of the 
Great Captain of the age, it was to military for- 
tune. He had, from nature, the further recom- 
mendation of a good person and carriage, and 
of a prepossessing appearance. The urbanity 
which now belongs to him, was then alloyed by 
some impetuousness of manner. It arose, we 
believe, chiefly out of his own diffidence, a feel- 
ing which often maizes the expression turbid, 



3t) BIOGRAPHY UF 

and gives an air of vehemence to what is only 
hurry. His utterance was still faulty. A friend 
who knew him a little after this period says, that 
when heated by argument, his ideas seemed to 
outstrip his power of expression ; his tongue 
appeared too large; he clipped some of his 
vords sadly ; his voice, sweet and musical in 
jonversation, grew loud and harsh, his articula- 
tion rapid, indistinct and imperfect. With these 
advantages and defects, such as they were, he 
ivas to begin the competitions of the bar in a part 
jf the country where he was quite unknown, and 
where much talent had preoccupied the ground 
vvith experience on its side, and acquaintance 
tvith the people and their affairs. There is no 
part of the world where, more than in Virginia, 
these embarrassments would be lessened to » 
new adventurer ; as there is nowhere a morf 
-ourteous race of gentlemen, accessible to thf 
prepossessions which merit excites. There wa^ 
however another embarrassment; our lawyer 
had no cause ; but he encountered here a young 
friend much in the same circumstances, but 
who had a single case, which he proposed to 
share with Wirt as the means of making a joint 
dehitt ; and with this small stock in trade, they 
went to attend the first countv-court. 



AV ILL I AM WIRT. 37 

Their case was one of joint assault and bat- 
tery, with joint judgmen: ogainst three, of whom 
two had been released subsequently to the judg- 
ment, and the third, who had been taken in 
execution, and imprisoned, claimed the benefit 
of that release as enuring to himself. Under 
these circumstances, the matter of discharge 
having happened since the judgment, the old 
remedy was by the writ of audita querela. But 
Mr. Wirt and his associate had learned from 
their Blackstone that the indulgence of courts in 
modern times, in granting summary relief, in 
such ca>es, by motion, had, in a great measure, 
superseded the use of the old writ ; and accord- 
ingly presented their case in the form of a mo- 
tion. 

The motion was opened by Wirt's friend, with 
all the alarm cf a first essay. The bench was 
then, in Virginia county-courts, composed of the 
ordinary justices of the peace ; and the elder 
members of the bar, by a usage the more neces- 
sary from the constitution of the tribunal, fre- 
quently interposed as amid curice, or informers 
of the conscience of the court. It appears that 
on the case being opened, some of these custom- 
ary advisers denied that a release to one after 
judgment released the other, and they denied also 



38 BIOGRAPHY OP 

the propriety of the form of proceeding. The 
ire of our beginner was kindled by this reception 
of his friend, and by this voluntary interference 
with their motion ; and, when he came to reply, 
he forgot the natural alarms of the occasion, and 
maintained his point with recollection and firm- 
ness. This awaked the generosity of an elder 
member of the bar, a person of consideration in 
the neighbourhood, and a good lawyer. He 
stepped in as an auxiliary, remarking that he 
also was amicus curice, and perhaps as much 
entitled to act as such, as others ; in which ca- 
pacity he would state his conviction of the pro- 
priety of the motion, and that the court was not 
at liberty to disregard it ; adding that its having 
come from a new quarter gave it but a stronger 
claim on the candour and urbanity of a Virginian 
bar. The two friends carried their point in 
triumph, and the worthy ally told his brethren, 
in his plain phrase, that they had best make fair 
weather with one who promised to be " a thorn 
in their side." The advice was, we dare say, 
unnecessary. The bar of that county wanted 
neither talent nor courtesy ; and the champion 
having vindicated his pretensions to enter the 
lists, was thenceforward engaged in many a 
sourteous '^ passage at arms." 



WILLIAM WIRT. 39 

The auxiliary mentioned in the above anec- 
dote was the late General John Miner, of Frede 
ricksburg, of whom Mr. Wirt, in subsequent 
years, often spoke with strong gratitude and 
esteem. " There was never," he says, " a more 
finished and engaging gentleman, nor one of a 
more warm, honest, and affectionate heart. He 
was as brave a man, and as tme a patriot, as 
ever lived. He was a most excellent lawyer too, 
with a most persuasive flow of eloquence, simple 
natural, graceful, and most affecting wherever 
there was room for pathos ; and his pathos was 
not artificial rhetoric ; it was of that true sort 
which flows from a feeling heart, and a noble 
mind. He was my firm and constant friend 
from that day through a long life ; and took 
occasion, several times in after years, to remind 
me of his prophecy, and to insist on my obhga- 
tion to sustain his ^ prophetic reputation.' He 
left a large and most respectable family, and 
lives embalmed in the hearts of all who knew 
him." 

In a year or two he extended his practice to 
the neighbouring county of Albemarle, where, 
in the spring of 1795, he married Mildred, the 
eldest daughter of Doctor George Gilmer, and 
took up his residence at Pen Park, the seat of 



40 BIOGRAPHY OF 

that gentleman, near Charlottesville. The family 
with Avhich he formed this connexion, was in 
the first rank of society, a condition which it 
adorned with substantial excellence, with the 
graces that give elegance to life, and with a full 
share of Virginian hospitality. His father-in- 
law was among the most eminent physicians of 
the day, but not more distinguished for pro- 
fessional skill than for his classical learning and 
his eloquence ; and he is well remembered in 
Yirginia for a flow of pure, natural wit; to 
which he added the higher charm of warm be- 
nevolence. Of these quahties his daughter in- 
herited a large portion, and was a woman of 
rare endowments both of mind and heart. The 
removal of Mr. Wirt brought him into a very 
agreeable and desirable neighbourhood, and in- 
troduced him to the acquaintance of many per 
sons of much worth, some of them of high 
celebrity, among whom it is sufiicient to men- 
tion Mr. Monroe and Mr. Jefferson, whose cordial 
friendship he gained and held without abatement 
to the end of their lives. Dr. Gilmer was the 
intimate friend and constant associate of both 
these gentlemen, as well as of Mr. Madison, who 
lived in the next county, and was in the habit 
of visiting Monticello and it? neighbourhood ; and 



WILLIAM WIRT. 41 

he thus brought his son-in-law into an inter- 
course with these eminent men. Mr. Wirt's 
serious associations in hfe have been of this uni- 
form stamp. "Doctores sapientise secutus est, 
qui sola bona quae honesta, mala tantum quae 
turpia." It was here, in the latter part of 1796, 
that the gentleman to whose sketch we have 
mentioned ourselves to be indebted, first saw 
and made acquaintance with him. He had 
never, he says, met with any man so highly 
engaging and prepossessing. His figure was 
strikingly elegant and commanding, with a face 
of the first order of masculine beauty, animated, 
and expressing high intellect. His manners 
took the tone of his heart; they were frank, 
open and cordial ; and his conversation, to which 
his reading and early pursuits had given a clas- 
sic tinge, was very polished, gay and witty. 
Altogether, his fiiend adds, he was a most fasci- 
nating companion, and to those of his own age 
irresistibly and universally winning. This was 
a dangerous eminence to one of his social turn 
and mercurial temperament, as the young and 
gay sought his company with eagerness. The 
intellectual bias, however, was that which pre- 
vailed, and filled his hours of retkement with 
befitting studies. He read and wrote constantly 



42 BIOGRAPHY OF 

and habitually, earnestly employing the periods 
thus "dedicate to closeness and the bettering of his 
mind/' in studying the fathers of English litera- 
ture, Bacon, Boyle, Locke, Hooker and others, with 
whose works the excellent library of Dr. Gilmer 
abounded. In this course of study and social 
enjoyment interchanged, his mind improved by 
habitual intercourse with men who were already 
the personages of history, he continued to reside 
at Pen Park, practising professionally in the sur- 
rounding counties. 

His business was rapidly increasing, and he 
was already considered as well one of the best 
lawyers in the circle of his practice, as destined 
to greater eminence, when, in September, 1799, 
he lost his wife, to whom he was tenderly attach- 
ed, and with whom he had lived most happily. 
Their union was not blessed with children. 
This event fell heavily on his spirits, and broke 
in, for a time, on his professional occupations 
and aims ; and with a view, we believe, to 
diverting his chagrin by change of scene, his 
friends urged him to allow himself to be nomi- 
nated in the next election of Clerk of the House 
of Delegates. This was pressed also by several 
members of influence in the House. He con- 
sented, and was elected. The duties of this 



WILLIAM WIRT. 43 

office occupied only a few of the winter months. 
A respectable salary was attached to it, and it 
had been held by several persons of character 
and celebrity, — by John Randolph, by his son 
Edmund, and by Wythe, the venerable Chan- 
cellor of Yirginia. It brought him into familiar 
intercourse with another circle of the active and 
vigorous minds of the state, among them many 
choice, gay spirits, to whom the wit and other 
fascinations of the new clerk carried their usual 
allurement. His immediate predecessor, John 
Stewart, of witty memory, had been displaced 
from political considerations, the republican party 
having just gained the ascendency. It was a 
neriod of great political excitement in Virginia. 
The celebrated "Resolutions of 1798" in relation 
to the Alien and Sedition laws, had been passed 
in the Assembly the preceding year, and the 
e^asuing session of the legislature was expected 
with unusual interest by both the parties into 
which the fundamental constitutional questions 
that had by that time taken body and shape, had 
divided not the state only, but the whole Union. 
The illustrious Patrick Henry, who in this ques- 
tion took side with the general government, had 
been elected to the House of Delegates, and 
suHable preparation was made to oppose in that 



44 BIOGRAPHY OP 

assembly an adversary who, though infirm with 
age and disease, was still regarded as formidable. 
Mr. Madison, Mr. Giles, Mr. Taylor of Carolina, 
and Mr. Nicholas, were arrayed against the vete- 
ran, who never came, however, to the conflict. 
His death, which happened not long before the 
session of the Assembly, disappointed Mr. Wirt 
of seeing the subject of his future biography, and 
left him to paint the picture from tradition, to 
which his actual contemplation of the man 
might have given its most characteristic touches. 
He held the post of Clerk, by two succeeding 
elections, till February, 1802. In the mean 
time he did not wholly relinquish his practice, 
and volunteered, in 1800, as counsel for the 
accused in the trial of Callender, whose prosecu- 
tion makes such a figure in the domestic political 
history of the United States. Mr. Writ, it may 
be remembered from a popular anecdote, did not 
escape his share of the judicial asperities which 
gave such offence to Callender's counsel, and 
afterward made part of the charges in the im- 
peachment of the judge. The latter appears to 
have appreciated his equableness of temper and 
manners. During the trial or shortly after it, 
meeting the father of Mr. Wirt's second wife, he 
asked after his son-in-law with some marks of 



WILLIAM WIRT. 45 

regard. "They did not summon Aim," he 
observed, "on my trial; had I known it, I might 
have summoned him myself; yet it was only to 
that young man I said any thing exceptionable, 
or which I have thought of with regret since." 
On the fourth of July, 1800, Mr. Wirt was 
selected by the democratic party at Richmond, 
to pronounce the anniversary oration. This 
brief composition, which we have seen, is fervid 
and rapid, and has so unpremeditated an air, 
and was pronounced, we have heard, so httle 
like other prepared orations, as to have been 
thought extemporary. 

In 1802 the legislature of Virginia gave him 
an unexpected proof of its confidence and esteem. 
It was found necessary at this time to divide the 
business of the court of Chancery, in which Mr. 
Wythe then presided, a man of the deepest 
learning, and the best civiUan that ever appeared 
in that state. Of three chancery districts now 
created, Mr. Wirt was appointed Chancellor of 
the eastern, comprehending the Eastern Shore 
of Virginia, and all the counties below Richmond. 
This appointment was wholly unexpected to 
him till the very moment before the election 
came on in the House of Delegates, and his first 
notice of it, we believe, was his being requested 



46 BIOGRAPHY OF 

by his friends to withdraw till the nomination 
should be made, and the votes taken. Sensible 
of the gravity of the trust, he went, even after 
the election, to Mr. Monroe, then governor of 
Virginia, to express an apprehension of its un- 
suitableness to either his years or attainments. 
Mr. Monroe replied that the legislature, he 
doubted not, knew very well what it was doing, 
and that it was not probable he would disappoint 
either it or the suitors in the court. Mr. Wirt 
was then but twenty-nine years of age, and his 
appointment to a court whose jurisdiction in- 
volves important interests, and requires weight 
of character, and integrit}^, as much as extensive 
attainments, was an emphatic mark of considera- 
tion from men w^ho, from his post of Clerk to 
the House, had opportunities of knowing him 
more than usually familiar. The duties of the 
chancellorship called him to reside at Williams- 
burg, where he presided in his court with in- 
dustry and ability, and with equal satisfaction to 
counsel and parties. In the autumn of the same 
year he married Elizabeth, a daughter of the 
late Colonel Gamble, of Richmond ; an esti- 
mable lady, still living, in the bosom of a large 
family of sons and daughters. 

This marriage led to his resignation of the 



WILLIAM WIRT. 47 

chancellorship, and his resumption of the prac- 
tice of law. The salary was inadequate to sup- 
port a family ; but other considerations probably 
conduced to this step. Emulation is not extinct 
at thirty, and a more stirring scene of action wa^ 
perhaps more agreeable to his temperament. In 
the first instance he designed a removal to Ken- 
tucky, and had even made some preparations 
with that view. But Mr. Tazewell, who then 
resided at Norfolk, earnestly urged him on the 
contrary to remove thither, and enforced his 
advice with many friendly representations and 
offers. We believe it was chiefly owing to the 
influence of this gentleman, then already emi 
nent in the profession which he adorns, that Mr. 
Wirt abandoned his design of going to the west, 
and went, in the winter of 1803 — 4, to reside at 
Norfolk. 

Just after his resigning the chancellorship, he 
was employed, together with Mr. Tazewell and 
Mr. Semple, afterward Judge Semple, in the 
defence of a man apprehended and tried on some 
points of circumstantial evidence so curious, that 
we are tempted to relate them. A person named 
St. George, who resided near Williamsburg, was 
shot dead one night through the window of his 
own house. No trace appeared of the assassin, 



48 BIOGRAPHY OF 

nor any circumstances that could indicate his 
enemy; only some duck-shot appeared in the 
wall, near the ceiling. While the crowd called 
out by the scene, stood confounded around the 
dead body, a bystander, who had been employed 
by the late Chancellor, a person remarkable to 
some degree of oddity for his habits of close and 
curious investigation, w^ent out of the house, and 
placing himself in the line of direction that the 
shot must have taken to the spot wdiere they 
lodged, endeavoured to ascertain from that cir- 
cumstance the exact position of the person 
who discharged the gun. While thus occupied, 
his eye was caught by a very small piece of 
paper on the ground betwixt himself and the 
window, which appeared, on taking up, to have 
been part of the wadding, and had on it what 
seemed to be two of the three strokes composing 
the letter qii. One of the crowd exclaimed at 
this moment, "I w^onder where Shannon is; 
has any one seen Shannon?" Shannon was 
the son-in-law of the deceased, and resided on 
the opposite shore of the James river; and it 
was soon ascertained that he had been seen in 
Wilhamsburg that day, with a gun on his shoul- 
der. The gun, however, had no cock upon it, 
and a blacksmith to whom he liad gone to have it 



WILLIAM WIRT. 49 

repaired, stated that Shannon had left his woik- 
shop with it in this condition. The man was 
pursued, nevertheless, over the river, and to his 
own house, to which he was found not to have 
returned ; and was traced at length to a tavern, 
some thirty miles off, and caught in bed with all 
his clothes on, sound asleep. He was seized as 
he lay, and on being searched, some duck shot 
was found about him, and a letter, with part of 
it torn off. When this letter was afterward com- 
pared with the fragment of the wadding, the 
two w^ere found to fit, and the letter m, before 
mentioned, to form part of the word my in the 
letter. On these circumstances, strengthened 
by the fact that the death of his father-in-law 
would have put Shannon in possession of his 
wife's fortune, he w^as brought to trial. A single 
juryman " stood out," as the phrase is, for ten 
days, and the defendant was discharged in con- 
sequence of this disagreement among his triers. 
No other circumstances ever threw light on the 
truth of this transaction. Some person, struck 
wuth Mr. Wirt's defence in the case, and having 
a remarkable memory, afberward repeated it wdth 
little variation. 

It w^as immediately before his removal to Nor 
folk that Mr. Wirt wrote the letters published in 



60 BIOGRAPHY O^ 

the Richmond Argus under the title of " The 
British Spy," which form part of the present 
volume. They were composed in a great de- 
gree for diversion of mind, with little care, and 
with still less expectation of the favourable 
reception they met at the time, or of the popu- 
larity they retained afterward. They have since 
been collected into a small volume, of which the 
present is the tenth edition. The sketches of 
living characters were received with a good deal 
of curiosity by the public, and are probably 
faithful pictures. 

At Norfolk he found for competitors the Taze- 
wells, the Taylors, the Neversons and others, 
men in the first rank of their profession, who at 
that time adorned its bar. In a commercial 
place too, whose foreign commerce was then very 
extensive, the questions most abundant before 
the courts were those of maritime law, to which 
in the theatre of his former practice he had been 
wholly a stranger, but to which he now applied 
himself with that indefatigable labour of which 
few men are more capable. There are no more 
willing witnesses than his opponents, of his 
learning, and vigorous conduct of his causes, 
and, consequently, his rapid rise in the public 
esteem. He continued to practise in Norfolk 



WILLIAM WIRT. ^ 51 

and ill the courts of the surrounding counties till 
1806, when he once more changed his residence 
to Richmond, soUcited to i-t by his family and 
friends, who conceived that he would find there 
a wider and more lucrative professional field. 
In this city he remained till his appointment to 
the Attorney-Generalship of the United States. 

Among the names which then gave remarka- 
ble celebrity to the Richmond bar, were those 
of Edmund Randolph, John Wickham, Daniel 
Call, George Hay, and George Keith Taylor, 
not to mention several others who mingled their 
rays in what was quite a constellation of legal 
learning and talents. If the competitions of 
such a theatre required all his resources, they 
were also of a nature to fashion and strengthen 
them. The sphere of his business and his repu- 
tation enlarged according to the expectation of 
his friends. He was often called into distant 
parts of the country both in criminal and great 
civil causes, and in the course of a various prac- 
tice of more than ten years, with men of abiUties 
as various, he rose in the general opinion to a 
level with the first of them. He seems at no 
point of his career, nor in any of the different 
scenes to which it was successively transferred, 
to have encountered the neglects which con- 



62 BIOGRAPHY OF 

spicuous talent has often had to struggle with in 
its outset. In more than one instance we have 
seen that the esteem of others anticipated his 
own modesty. We are little disposed to attribute 
to accident any permanent success or popularity, 
though the reader's recollection may furnish him 
with one or more striking examples to the con- 
trary. However this may be in pohtical life, or 
in other branches of affairs, "it is not at the bar, 
at least," as Mr. Pinkney used to say, perhaps 
with some conscious triumph, "that a man can 
acquire or preserve a false and fraudulent repu- 
tation for talents." Fortune, indeed, as is com- 
monly said, is wont to smile upon such as know 
how to make a discreet use of her favours. 

A fortunate occasion of this sort, for his pro- 
fessional fame, occurred in the year following 
his removal to Richmond, when the celebrated 
trial of Aaron Burr took place in that city, on a 
charge which, deeply moving the interest and 
passions of the whole nation, made familiar with 
every person who could read a newspaper, all 
the ;paities and actors in the cause. This trial 
commenced in the winter of 1807, and Mr. 
Wirt was retained, under the direction of Presi- 
dent Jefferson, to aid the Attorney for the United 
States in the prosecution. We believe it was 



WILLIAM WIRT. 53 

designed to engage him on the side of the prose- 
cuted ; but Mr. Wirt was absent from Richmond 
at the moment, and no application was made to 
him. 

Few trials in any country ever excited a 
greater sensation than this. The crime imputed 
was of the deepest guilt; the accused, a per- 
son of the highest eminence both for talents and 
political station, having but lately occupied the 
second post, with pretensions to the first, in the 
country the government of which he was charged 
with a design to subvert. Conspicuous persons 
were implicated in the supposed plot ; and the 
party violence which marked the period, mingled 
itself in the opposite opinions which the transac- 
tions themselves might naturally create. Public 
attention was consequently fixed with eager 
curiosity on every step of the trial, and the coun 
sel, the bench, and the government, scanned the 
proceedings with the most inquisitive scrutiny. 
The overt act of treason being charged to have 
been committed within the jurisdiction of the 
circuit court for the District of Virginia, the trial 
was brought by this circumstance to the city of 
Richmond, whose bar we have already men- 
tioned to have been adorned by some of the first 

men of the profession. The defence, which was 

5* 



54 BIOGRAPHY OF 

conducted by some of the most conspicuous oJ 
these, derived additional aid from the legal learn 
\ng of Luther Martin, who was familiarly called 
in his native state, "the law-leger," and not a 
little from the legal acumen of the accused him 
self, whose great talents did not desert him on 
this occasion. A judge presided at the tribunal, 
on whose intellectual vigour and moral dignity, 
time and long trial have conferred a character of 
grandeur. The court was incessantly thronged 
with earnest spectators and hearers, both from 
Virginia and other states, many of them enlight- 
ened and conspicuous men. It is evident that 
this was not a theatre where, in the language of 
Mr. Pinkney, a spurious reputation could be 
supported, as, on the other hand, it gave scope 
to the greatest reach of abilities. It is justly 
remarked by the reporter, a competent judge, 
that "perhaps no trial for treason has taken 
place in any country, in which more ability, 
learning, ingenuity and eloquence were displayed. 
All the important decisions on treason in Eng- 
land and this country, were acutely and tho- 
roughly examined, and their application to 
questions before the court discussed with great 
ingenuity and skill ; nor was less industry or 
judgment shown m arguing the application and 



WILLIAM WIRT. 65 

effect of the Constitution of the United States, 
and of the conamon law, if it existed at all as a 
law of the Union." The encomium of the Chief 
Justice is as emphatic, and more authoritative. 
" The question," says he, (speaking of one of 
the principal arguments before the court,) " has 
been argued in a manner worthy of its import- 
ance. A degree of eloquence seldom displayed 
on any occasion, has embellished solidity of 
argument and depth of research." 

In a cause so vigorously urged and defended 
Mr. Wirt enhanced and extended into every part 
of the country, a reputation which is seldom 
attained at thirty-five. His principal speech, 
which occupied four hours, wa? replete through- 
out with a creative fancy, polished wit, keen 
repartee, or logical reasoning ; it is especially 
marked by that comprehensiveness of thought 
which " travels beyond the record," and brings 
illustrations, analogies and aid from universa/ 
reason and abstract truth. This diffuses a dig- 
nity and force over the production which his 
technical learning, which is abundant and apt, 
could not have bestowed alone. The diction 
is chaste, never redundant ; and he here displays 
co5?spicuously that lucid order which is perhaps 
the most remarkable quality of his eloquence ; 



56 BIOGRAPHY OF 

the texture of the whole oration liappily show- 
ing that in this sense the saying of Seneca is 
untrue, " Non est ornamentum virile, concinni- 
tas." One well-known popular passage in this 
speech has shared the fate of many a classic 
page, of palling by familiar repetition. 

But we might quote several others as very 
happy examples of oratorical skill ; the exordium, 
in which he repels the charge repeatedly urged, 
of personality and persecution to the accused ; 
and the passage in which he describes the rhe- 
torical arts employed against him by the opposite 
counsel, Mr. Wickham. In his argument on 
the motion to commit Burr and others for trial 
in Kentucky, a vein of ridicule enlivens and 
enforces the reasoning into which the picture of 
the blasted ambition and daring despair of Burr 
is inwoven with great effect. 

We may add, in taking leave of this cele- 
brated cause, that the excitements of the period 
which gave it so much of its interest with the 
public, elicited from the counsel themselves some- 
thing more than the ordinary keenness of foren- 
sic debate. Readiness, firmness, and a large 
portion of that civic courage which is perhaps the 
most commanding quality of mind, were perpet- 
ually struck out in a proceeding in which the 



WILLIAM WIRT. 57 

whole public erected itself into a tribunal, or 
rather took sides with all the eagerness of par- 
tisans. 

In 1808, Mr. Wirt was elected, without any 
canvass on his part, a member of the Virginia 
House of Delegates for the city of Richmond. 
This was the first and last time he ever sat in 
any legislative body, preferring the more con- 
genial or more necessary pursuits of his profes- 
sion, from which neither his popularity nor the 
suggestions of those who thought they saw in 
politics a more conspicuous theatre of action, 
prevailed on him to withdraw. He was one of 
the special committee appointed by the House of 
Delegates in that session, to whom were referred 
certain resolutions touching our foreign relations, 
and the measures of administration which grew 
out of them at that exceedingly embarrassing 
and critical period. The report of the committee 
is from the pen of Mr. Wirt. It reviews ener- 
getically and impartially the measures of the two 
belligerents, the French edicts and the British 
orders in council, and comments indignantly on 
the tone of the British diplomacy towards Ame- 
rica, especially on the impertinent and insulting 
discrimination of Mr. Canning between the peo- 
ple of this country and their government. The 



58 BIOGRAPHY OP 

report vindicates the measures of Mr. Jefferson's 
administration in this crisis, and urges the sup- 
port of them on the nation. In the preceding 
July he was one of a committee appointed by 
" the Friends of the Manufacturing Association" 
of Virginia, to prepare an address to the people 
of the state. This paper, which was published 
in the Richmond Enquirer, reviews the above 
mentioned measures of the belligerents, and 
deduces from their unhappy operation on our 
commerce the necessity of fostering domestic 
manufactures, to which it argues that the capital, 
resources and mechanical skill of the country 
were entirely adequate. 

In the same year, 1808, he wrote the essays 
in the Enquirer signed " One of the People," 
addressed to the members of Congress who had 
joined in a protest against the nomination of 
Mr. Madison to the presidency. In these he 
pourtrays the character and services of that ven- 
erable statesman with a warmth and emphasis 
which, now that time has mellowed the asperity 
of the period, and the illustrious sage of the con- 
stitution reposes in honoured retirement, one won- 
ders to think should ever have been necessary. 

It must be the sentiment of all good natures, 
in reviewing this and similar periods of political 



WILLIAM WIRT. 59 

heats — when their eager contentions have lost 
their edge, and when so many of the acutest 
and ablest minds find in the opposite opinions so 
keenly maintained, so much to be modified, 
explained or reconciled — to retrace their whole 
career with some humility on their own part, 
and great indulgence to con1:emporary actors. 
Of this feeling we hardly know a stronger and 
more affecting instance than in the two illustri- 
ous sages of Monticello and duincy ; nor one 
that reads a more salutary and magnanimous 
lesson to the fierce rivalries of politicians. It can- 
not be doubted that the same sentiment which, in 
the meditative period of life, approached to each 
other, these leaders and idols of two parties so 
earnest and so angry, must be shared in a large 
degree by the subordinate actors in the conten- 
tious scene. Such, at least, we believe to be the 
view which all better spirits cast back on this 
period of our domestic politics, when, indeed, our 
foreign relations were so perplexing and pro 
voking as unavoidably to sharpen the bitterness 
of other dissensions. In reviewing these scenes, 
the author of the Life of Patrick Henry holds 
tliis candid language : 

" It is not my function to decide between these parties ; 
nor do I feel myself qualified for such an office. I have lived 



60 BIOGRAPHY OF 

too near die times, and am conscious of having been too 
strongly excited by the feelings of the day, to place myself 
in the chair of the arbiter. It would, indeed, be no difficvdt 
task to present, vmder the engaging air of historic candour, 
the arguments on one side in an attitude so bold and com- 
manding, and to exhibit those on the other under a foi-m so 
faint and shadowy, as to beguile the reader into the adoption 
of my own opinions. But this would be mijust to the oppo- 
site party, and a disingenuous abuse of the confidence of the 
reader. Let us then remit the question to the historian of 
future ages; who, if the particular memory of tlie past times 
shall not be lost in those great events which seem preparing 
for tlie nation, v/ill probably decide that, as in most family 
quarrels, both parties have been somewhat in the wrong." 

In his discourse on the death of Adams and 
Jefferson, he puts this subject in a still more 
amiable and interesting point of light. The 
orator says, — 

" There was one solace of the declining years of both these 
great men, which must not be passed. It is that coi-respond- 
ence which arose between them, after their retirement from 
public life. That rx)rrespondence, it is to be hoped, will be 
given to the world. If it ever shall, I speak from knowledge 
when I say, it v^rill be found to be one of the most interesting 
and affecting that the world has ever seen. That "cold 
cloud" which had hung for a time over their friendship, 
passed away with the conflict out of v/hich it had grown, and 
the attachment of their early life returned in all its force. 
They had both now bid adieu, a final adieu, to all public 
employments, and were done with all the agitating passions 
of life. They were dead to the ambitious world ; and this cor- 
respondence resembles, more than niiy thing else, one of those 



WILLI AIM WIRT. 61 

conversations in the Elysiiun of the ancients, which tlie 
shades of tlie departed great were supposed by tliem to hold 
with regard to tlie affairs of the world they had left. There 
are the same playful allusions to tlie points of difference that 
had divided their parties ; the same mutual, and light, and 
unimpassioned raillery on their own past misconceptions 
and mistalces ; the same mutual and just admiration and 
respect for their many virtues and services to mankind. 
That correspondence was to them both, one of the most 
genial employments of their old age ; and it reads a lesson 
of v/isdom on the bitterness of party spirit, by which tlie 
wise and tlie good will not fail to profit." 

But this candid mood was far from prevail- 
ing at the period which we have reached in this 
biographical sketch. Questions of portentous 
magnitude agitated the nation, and called forth 
no less passion than talent. Mr. Jefferson was 
just about to leave the Presidential chair ; under 
Mr. Madison who was to succeed him, the same 
policy was to be pursued, and the same strenuous 
opposition to be anticipated. Under these cir- 
cumstances, when honest men of both sides 
naturally looked about for the most capable 
agents — with the high confidence of his party, 
and with abilities that might have led him to 
any political distinctions — Mr. Wirt, however 
interested in the questions of the times, and with 
a large knowledge of them derived from his 
famiharitv with the events and actors, declined 
6 



62 BIOORAPHY OP 

to abandon the path of professional Hfe. Though 
urged to it by such as could the most compe- 
tently estimate both the turn of his genius and 
the value of his services to the public, he seems 
sedulously to have constrained himself from this 
bustling field within the calmer region of an 
intellectual pursuit, undazzled by the prospect 
of popular honours, though no man feels more 
the sting of a laudable ambition. Of those who 
saw in his capacity a broad foundation for fame 
in this new department of affairs, was his friend 
Mr. Jefferson, who, about the time of his own 
retiiement, in language equally complimental 
of Mr. Wirt, and indicative of his profound 
interest in the crisis approaching under his suc- 
cessor, pointed out to him this career as equally 
worthy of his ambition and advantageous to the 
public, and one of which he might expect to 
bear off the first honours. His expressions de- 
note as large a share of admiration and esteem 
as the ambition of any man can desire. One 
of the last acts, indeed, of Mr. Jefferson's hfe was 
an offer to Mr. Wirt on the part of the Univer- 
sity of Virginia, accompanied by some circum- 
stances that particularly evinced the respect he 
was held in by himself and the rest of that 
body. 



WILLIAM AVIRT. 63 

From this period, therefore, till 1817, Mr. 
Wirt continued to practise law in Richmond and 
its vicinity, and we have little to record of the 
interval except his increasing reputation. Du- 
ring this period he gained several suits of par- 
ticular celebrity and interest. In 1812 he wrote 
the series of papers entitled "The Old Bachelor." 
They were originally published in the Rich- 
mond Enquirer, and have since, in a collected 
form, passed through several editions. They 
are now republished, for the fourth time, in the 
ensuing volumes. It would appear from the 
second number, that the immediate occasion 
of them was the review of Ashe's Travels in 
America, in the thirtieth number of the Edin- 
burgh Review ; a well known scandalous libel 
on American institutions, manners and literature, 
in a periodical whose flippancy often exceeded 
even its wit. There were various contributors ; 
but much the larger part of the papers were fur- 
nished by Mr. Wirt, and, like those in the Spy, 
were hastily thrown together in brief hours of 
relaxation. 

The "Life of Patrick Henry," a work con- 
templated for some years, but put aside by pro- 
fessional pursuits, and eventually completed 
amidst ihe inces?anf hurry of them, was pub- 



64 BIOGRAPHY UF 

lished in September, 1817. This is the longest, 
and, judging by its whole effect on the reader, 
the best of Mr. Wirt's literary productions. Mr. 
Jefferson's praise of it is the justest, and perhaps 
the best an author can desire ; that "those who 
take up the book will find they cannot lay it 
down, and this will be its best criticism." Though 
not included in the present publication, we have 
some observations to make hereafter on this 
work. It had an extensive circulation, which 
would have been greater yet but for circum- 
stances having no connexion with its popularity 
or literary merit. In 1816 he was appointed, by 
Mr. Madison, the Attorney of the United States 
for the District of Virginia, and in the autumn 
of the following year, by Mr. Monroe, Attorney- 
General of the United States. Both these ap- 
pointments were unsolicited and unexpected by 
him. In consequence of the latter, he removed 
in the winter of 1817-18 to Washington. 

At the bar of the Supreme Court he found the 
highest forensic theatre in the country, and per- 
haps there never was one in any country that 
presented a more splendid array of learning and 
talents conjoined. In the causes, too, which it 
is the official duty of the Attorney-General to 
prosecute or defend, the most conspicuous coun 



WILLIAM WIRT. 65 

sel of that bar are commonly combined against 
him. In how many conflicts he sustained these 
odds against him, with a vigour always adequate 
to the occasion, is very well known to those who 
are familiar with our judicial history. The 
office of Attorney-General he held twelve years, 
through the entire administrations of Mr. Monroe 
and Mr. Adams, — longer by many years than 
it has ever been held by any other ; and in this 
post, always arduous, his labours seem much to 
have surpassed those of his predecessors. Scarcely 
any of them resided at Washington, nor did they 
act as members of the cabinet. They left no 
written precedents nor opinions, nor any other 
trace of thek official course, to aid their successors. 
Mr. Wirt, on the contrary, left behind him three 
large volumes of official opinions. His practice 
soon became large in the Supreme Court, and with 
it his celebrity as a profound jurist no less than an 
orator of the first rank of his contemporaries. A 
friend has remarked of him that his diligent 
labour well deserved this success. " He was 
always," he says, "a man of labour; occasionally 
of most intense and unremitting labour. He was 
the most improving man, also, I ever knew ; 
for I can truly say that I never heard him speak 
after any length of time, without being surprised 



66 BIOGRAPHY OP 

and delighted at his improvement both in man- 
ner and substance," This testimony of an old 
intimate, a man of parts and discernment, is 
quoted as well for the praise it conveys, as in 
proof of the unrelaxing toil by which men must 
gain judicial eminence. Mr. Pinkney was to 
the end of his days a model of this indefatigable 
labour, and died, as it were, in the very act of 
struggle. 

At the close of Mr. Adams's administration, 
Mr. Wirt, having resigned the Attorney-Gene- 
ralship, removed to Baltimore, where he now 
resides. He had been previously selected by the 
citizens of Washington, on the death of Mr. 
Jefferson and Mr. Adams, to pronounce a dis- 
course on the lives and characters of those two 
remarkable men ; this was delivered on the nine- 
teenth of October, 1826. It contains several 
passages of a strain altogether worthy of one 
of the most impressive occasions that ever hap- 
pened in any age or country. In 1830 he de- 
livered an address to one of the literary societies 
at Rutgers' College, and another in the same 
year, at the celebration in Baltimore of the tri- 
imiph of hberty in France. These various dis 
courses have been printed, and are in the hands 
of the public. 



WILLIAM WIRT. 67 

It remains to add to this sketch of Mr. Wirt's 
professional career, some notice of him as an ora- 
tor and a writer, in which latter capacity he is 
presented in the ensuing publication. This 
contains, indeed, but his fugitive essays, the 
effusions rather of haste than leisure. The more 
strenuous efforts of his mind are to be sought in 
his forensic arguments, a great portion of which 
will share the fate of the labours of other great 
lawyers, and hve only in the tradition of his 
hearers, and the admiring report of the day. 
Such, it is to be lamented, has been the fate of 
the greater part of the displays of Mr. Pinkney. 
The report of Burr's trial is in many hands how- 
ever, and in the speeches of Mr. Wirt in that 
case the jurist will applaud more his extensive 
learning and comprehensive reasoning, than 
popular readers the more adorned and famihar 
passages. Others of his arguments, on questions 
of law or great constitutional principles, may 
still be preserved, and w-e hope will be collected. 
Among his writings not mentioned before, are 
the essays published in the Richmond Enquirer 
in 1809, under the signature of " The Sentinel," 
which throw light on some of the debated ques- 
tions of the day. The essays in the following 
volumes, the interludes of graver business, apart 



68 BIOGRAPHY OF 

from their intrinsic merit, may have some further 
curiosity as the recreations of a mind more than 
usually engrossed by the toils of the most labo- 
rious of professions. In a criticism of " The 
Old Bachelor," written some years ago by an 
accomplished scholar and critic, the writer ob- 
serves, " We look with gratitude and wonder 
upon a gentleman of the bar, in whom the 
severest labours, and highest offices, and amplest 
emoluments, and brightest laurels of his profes- 
sion, have not stifled the generous ambition of 
letters ; whose mind has been for a long term 
of years exposed to the atmosphere of the courts, 
and the attrition of the world of business, with- 
out losing any of the finer poetical qualities 
with which it was richly endowed."" 

" The British Spy" obtained, on its first ap- 
pearance, the most flattering proof of merit, 
popularity, which, to judge from its nine editions, 
it has continued to retain. The story of the 
Blind Preacher was almost as current as those 
of Le Fevre and La Roche. The sketches of 
character, a difficult department of good writing, 
were esteemed so highly descriptive, in the cir- 



♦ Review of '' The Old Bachelor;" Analectic Magazine, 
October, 1818 



WILLIAM WIRT. 69 

cles where the depicted orators were known, as 
to be in every hand. This kind of literature 
was httle practised among us when these essays 
appeared; and if they were the more kindly 
received on that account, they have not however 
been succeeded, in a period of nearly thirty years, 
by any others of equal merit, of the same stamp. 
" The Old Bachelor" seems, hke its predecessor, 
to have obtained an unexpected popularity. The 
critic just quoted, says of these essays, "they 
constitute one of the most successful experiments 
which have been made in this department of let- 
ters since the era of Johnson." The disquisi- 
tions on eloquence, " originally," says the author, 
" a prominent figure in his design," are those, 
perhaps, which display most vigour, are imbued 
the deepest with observation and thought, and 
best show the influence on the author's mind, 
of his famiuar reading of the ancient classics. 
The reader would be glad to see this topic re- 
sumed and expanded by one who may remind 
him, in some of the better passages, of the grace- 
ful composition imputed to Tacitus, " The Dia- 
logue concerning Oratory." 

Both these series of essays give a general 
impression that, had the author devoted himself 
to letters, he would have reached some of the 



70 BIOGRAPHY OP 

first excellences of writing-. His conceptions 
are vigorous ani plentiful, his sentiments ele- 
vated and warm ; his fancy, if it sometimes 
betrays him into h3rperbole, is generally delicate 
and natural, and varies from grave to gay, 
though not with equal facility in both. He is 
serious and fervent for the most part ; but some 
of his best papers are those which, in the midst 
of their earnestness and even warmth, have a 
dash of good humour that shows he could have 
played easily and cheerfully with his subject. 
An example of this is in the third letter of the 
Spy, where, exposing the " cold conceit of the 
Roman division of a speech," he describes ludi- 
crously the bustle of the modern orator when he 
reaches the peroration, where by established 
usage he is expected to be sublime or pathetic. 
This " hysterical vehemence" is sketched from 
life, with the felicity of Steele or Addison. The 
same vein of humorous description appears in the 
thirty-first and thirty-second numbers of the Old 
Bachelor, and one of the illustrative anecdotes 
would shine in a new treatise peri batho2is 
This sort of painting, though in so different a 
style, might be expected from a hand from which 
we have the inspired sketch of the Blind 
Preacher. 



WILLIAM WIRT. 71 

The mere diction of these essays is for the 
most part what he himself describes as a good 
one, " simple, pure and transparent, like the 
atmosphere, which never answers its purpose so 
well to make objects seen, as when free from 
vapours of every kind." But though this me- 
dium is never itself misty or obscure, it is now 
and then the vehicle of images somewhat me- 
teoric and glaring. His redundancy, however, is 
not that of words, but of the thought, " vivo gur- 
gite exundans ;" nor is it the redundancy of 
weakness, nor often of wrong taste, but that 
which is incident to hurried composition. His 
images, therefore, are frequently natural and ele- 
gant. Of the figure of ampHfication, we had 
admired the beginning of the twenty-third num- 
ber of the Old Bachelor as a very happy exam- 
ple, when we found it mentioned in the same 
light in the criticism already quoted. The moral 
tone of the writer, and the " amiable fire" with 
which he paints virtue and inculcates her lessons, 
merit the most emphatic praise, as being the 
chief characteristic and aim of all his productions. 
Indeed this amiable temper meets us at every 
turn ; and to that quality, and not to any mawk- 
ish affectation of sentiment, is to be referred 
much of the warm colouring" of some of his 



72 BIOGRAPHY OF 

descriptions. He looks on the bright side of 
nature and human hfe ; a turn of mind in a 
lawyer of two score years of practice, that indi- 
cates a large original fund of candour, generosity 
and good nature. It must be mentioned that 
some of the best papers of the Old Bachelor are 
from other hands ; of this number are the twenty-^ 
fifth, twenty-ninth and thirty-third, and the let- 
ters in the fifteenth and twenty-first. 

If we were to select a single passage from Mr. 
Wirt's writings in which he has most succes- 
fully addressed our moral passions, and called 
in the beauty and grandeur of external nature 
to heighten the effect, it Avould be the description 
in the discourse upon Adams and Jefferson, of 
the habitations and domestic habits of these two 
civic heroes. In that of Monticello, the reader is 
so skilfully wrought up by the mute majesty of 
the material images which the orator has been 
gradually assembhng around him, that he sym- 
pathetically starts at the announcement of the 
" time-honoured" habitant of the spot. We do 
not fear to trespass on the reader by quoting the 
whole passage. 

" Of ' the chief of the Argor^uts, as Mr. Jefferson so clas- 
sically and so happily styled his illustrious friend of tlia 
North, it is my misfortw^i to b*» able to speak only by re- 



WILLIAM WIRT. 73 

port. But every representation concurs, in drawing the 
same pleasing and affecting picture of the Roman simplicity 
in which tliat Father of his Country lived ; of tlie frank, 
warm, cordial, and elegant reception that he gave to all who 
approached him ; of the interesting kindness with which he 
disbursed tlie golden treasures of his experience, and shed 
around liim the rays of his descending sun. His conversa- 
tion was rich in anecdote and characters of the times that 
were past ; rich in political and moral instruction : full of 
that best of wisdom, which is learnt from real life, and flowing 
fi'om his heart with that warm and honest frankness, that 
fervour of feeling and force of diction, which so strikingly 
distinguished him in the meridian of his life. Many of us 
heard that simple and touching account given of a parting 
scene with liim. by one of our eloquent divines : When he 
rose up from that little couch behind tlie door, on which he 
was wont to rest his aged and weary limbs, and v/ith his 
silver locks hanging on each side of his honest face, stretched 
forth that pure hand, which was never soiled even by a sus- 
picion, and gave his kind and parting benediction. Such 
was the blissful and honoured retirement of the sage of 
Gluincy. Happy the life, \vhich, verging upon a century, 
had met with but one serious political disappointment ! and 
for that, too, he had livpd to rer.p.ivft a golden atonement. 
' Even there where he had garnered up his heart.' 

" Let us now turn for a moment to the patriot of the South. 
The Roman moralist, in that great work which he has left 
for the government of man in all the offices of life, has de- 
scended even to prescribe the kind of habitation in which an 
honoured and distinguished man should dwell. It should 
not, he says, be small, and mean, and sordid : nor, on the 
other hand, extended witli profuse and wanton extraveigance. 
It should be large enough to receive and accommodate the 
visiters which such a man never fails to attract, and suited 
7 



74 



BIOGRAPHY OP 



in its ornaments, as well as its diinensions, to the cliaracter 
and fortune of the individual. Monticello has now lost its 
great charm. Those of you who have not already visited it, 
will not be very apt to visit it hereafter: and, from the 
feelings which you cherish for its departed owner, I persuade 
myself that you will not be displeased with a brief and rapid 
sketch of that abode of domestic bliss, that temple of science. 
Nor is it, indeed, foreign to the express pui-pose of this meet- 
ing, which, in looking to ' his life and character,' naturally 
embraces his home and his domestic habits. Can any thing 
be indifferent to us, which was so dear to him, and which 
was a subject of such just admiration to the hundreds and 
thousands tliat were continually resorting to it, as to an object 
of pious pilgrimage *? 

'' The Mansion House at Monticello was built and fur- 
nished in the days of his prosperity. In its dimensions, its 
architecture, its arrangements and ornaments, it is such a 
one as became the character and fortime of the man. It 
stands upon an elliptic plain, formed by cutting down the 
apex of a mountain ; and, on the west, stretching away to 
the north and the south, it commands a view of the Blue 
Ridge for a hundred and fifty miles, and brings under the 
eye one of the boldest and most beautiful horizons in the 
world : while, on the east, it prftsents an extent of prospect 
bounded only by the spherical form of the earth, in which 
nature seems to sleep in eternal repose, as if to form one of 
her finest contrasts with the rude and rolling grandeur on the 
west. In the wide prospect, and scattered to the north ana 
south, are several detached mountains, which contribute to 
animate and diversify tliis enchanting landscape ; and 
among them, to the south, Willis's Mountain, which is so 
interestingly depicted in his Notes. From this summit, the 
Philosopher was wont to enjoy that spectacle, among tlie 
fiublimest of Nature's operations, the looming of the distant 



WILLIAM WIRT. 75 

mountains ; and to watch the motions of the planets, and 
the greater revolution of the celestial sphere. From this 
summit, too, the patriot could look down, with uninterrupted 
vision, upon the wide expanse of tlie world aroimd, for which 
he considered himself born; and upward, to the open and vault- 
ed heavens which he seemed to approach, as if to keep him 
continually in mind of his high responsibility. It is indeed 
a prospect in which you see and feel, at once, that nothing 
mean or little could live. It is a scene fit to nourish tliose 
great and high-souled principles which formed the ele- 
ments of his character, and was a most noble and appro- 
priate post for such a sentinel, over the rights and liberties of 
man. 

"Approaching the house on the east, the visiter instinct- 
ively paused, to cast around one thrilling glance at this 
magnificent panorama: and then passed to the vestibule, 
v/here, if he had not been previously informed, he would 
immediately perceive that he was entering the house of 
no common man. In the spacious and lofty hall which 
opens before him, he mai'ks no tawdry and unmeaning orna- 
ments : but before, on the right, on the left, all around, the 
eye is struck and gratified with objects of science and taste, 
so classed and arranged as to produce their finest effect. On 
one side, specimens of sculpture set out, in such order, as to 
exhibit at a coup d'ceil, the historical progress of that art ; 
from the first rude attempts of the aborigines of our country, 
up to that exquisite and finished bust of the great patriot 
himself, from the master hand of Caracci. On the other 
side, the visiter sees displayed a vast collecticm of specimens 
of Indian art, tlieir paintings, weapons, ornaments, and 
manufactures ; on anotlier, an array of tlie fossil productions 
of our country, mineral and animal ; the polished remains 
of those colossal monsters that once trod our forests, and are 
no more ; and a variegated display of the branching honours 



76 BIOGRAPHY OF 

of those ' monarchs of the waste,' that still people tlie wilds 
of tlie American Continent. 

" From this hall he was ushered into a noble saloon, from 
which the glorious landscape of the west again bursts upon 
his view ; and which, within, is hung thick around v/ith the 
finest productions of the pencil — historical paintings of the 
most striking siibjects from all countries, and all ages ; the 
portraits of distinguished men and patriots, both of Europe 
and America and medallions and engravings in endless 
profusion. 

" While the visiter was yet lost in the contemplation of 
these treasures of the arts and sciences, he was startled by 
the approach of a strong and sprightly step, and turning 
with instinctive reverence to the door of entrance, he was 
met by the tall, and animated, and stately figure of the pa- 
triot himself— his coimtenance beaming with intelligence 
and benignity, and his outstretched hand, with its strong 
and cordial pressure, confirming the courteous welcome of his 
lips. And then came that charm of manner and conversa- 
tion that passes all description — so cheerful — so unassuming 
— so free, and easy, and frank, and kind, and gay — that 
even the young, and overawed, and embarrassed visiter at 
once forgot his fears, and felt himself by the side of an old 
and familiar friend." 

In the "Life of Patrick Henry," though a 
work of Mr. Wirt's more mature age, the man- 
ner of the narrative has been thought too ambi- 
tious, and the subject of it to be decked in the 
colours of declamation and fancy. These are 
faults to repel the judicious reader ; yet the vol- 
ume is not one which the most judicious will 



WILLIAM WIRT. 77 

lay down unfinished, or will read with weari- 
ness. It often occurred to us, we confess, in our 
first perusal of this work, that the hero of it 
seemed more like the creation of a rhetorician, 
than a personage of history, however grave, elo- 
quent and eminent in the view of his contempo- 
raries; and, in common with others of the 
author's readers, we gave him credit for having 
filled up his drawing with colours over rich and 
splendid. Yet when we referred again to the 
incidents and anecdotes, and found them often 
told in the words of the relaters ; when we recol- 
lected, however vaguely the causes might be 
assigned, there was a general concurrence as to 
the effects of this traditionary eloquence ; we 
began to think that the exaggeration, if any, 
was that of the witnesses and not of the advocate 
in the cause. Nor will it account for this lavish 
praise, that these orations, so celebrated in Yir- 
ginia, were addressed, as has been said, to the 
more popular kinds of assemblies, " whose feel- 
ings are easily excited, and whose opinions are 
seldom founded on the basis of rational convic- 
tion."* This is not true of a large portion of 
these eflforts ; on the contrary, the auditors who 

♦North American Review for March, 1818. 

7* 



78 BIOGRAPHY OP 

are witnesses in the case, were many of them 
men not only of the fiist eminence in their own 
state, but famous throughout the continent, and 
some of them themselves the men of posterity. 
Mr. Jefferson, who is surely one of the latter 
class, uses language that justifies the boldest 
praise of the biographer, and proves that the 
powers of Henry were felt ahke by all degrees 
both of condition and discernment. That emi- 
nent man is cited, it may be remembered, as 
authority for many passages in the work ; and 
in some of his letters communicating information 
to the author, he is known to have spoken of the 
oratory of Henry as "bold, grand and over- 
whelming," giving " examples of eloquence such 
as probably had never been exceeded," and the 
man himself as having been "the idol of his state," 
beyond example. Of the same tone is the evi- 
dence of many other persons whose celebrity is 
some warrant of their good taste; and many 
authentic anecdotes are afloat, some of them odd 
enough, and not such as to find place in a serious 
work, which would show what an extraordinary 
impression prevailed in his native state, of the 
command of this memorable person over the rea- 
son as well as the passions of inen. Of one of 
these great displays the old Congress was the 



WILLIAM WIKT. 79 

theatre ; an assembly compared with the most 
venerable senates of ancient or modern days, by 
one who would himself have been the ornament 
of any ; and yet the tradition of its effect is not 
less constant or emphatic. 

No anecdotes, therefore, related of ancient 
eloquence are more authentic than those of the 
oratory of our illustrious countryman. Yet, 
when the modern reader, in an age too, as has 
been sarcastically observed, when writing and 
printing are not unknown, asks for even the 
fragments of this splendid web, and finds them 
few and meager, he is inclined to regard the evi- 
dence with some disbelief, and the writer who 
reflects its warmth in his work, as credulous and 
declamatory. But such a conclusion is to disre- 
gard unjustifiably a cloud of judicious contem- 
porary witnesses on the one hand, and on the 
other, to forget with what imperfect remains, care- 
lessly preserved, mutilated and defaced by the 
collectors, and never repaired by the hand of the 
original designer, we are to compare their descrip- 
tions. Of the greater part of these orations we 
have only such fragments as could be carried 
away in the memory of the hearers, who, however 
fit to estimate their excellence as critics, might not 
have the faculty nor the occasion to relate them 



80 BIOGRAPHY OF 

correctly. Of those, again, more regularly 
reported, as in the debates of the Virginia Con- 
vention, it is a striking and very curious cir- 
cumstance, that the reporter seems to have 
" dropped" Mr. Henry, to use his biographer's 
expression, in those very passages where the 
reader would be most anxious to follow him. So 
in the stenographical notes of the argument on 
the British debts, it is, as the biographer informs 
us, where we are prepared for the most captiva- 
ting or overwhelming flights, that the frequent 
erasures bear most marks of an apparent but 
ineffectual efTort to recall what the enchantment 
of the moment caused to escape the verbal record 
of the reporter. Attentively considered, this cir- 
cumstance, which deprives us of the language of 
the orator, is another of the many homages of 
his hearers to his enchanting faculty. 

Recollecting and weighing these circum- 
stances, we doubt whether the author of the Life 
of Patrick Henry has done more in his fervid 
delineation of him, than reflect the united testi- 
mony of witnesses of all classes, whether friends 
or foes. Had he, in fact, practised a rhetorical 
art; had he seemed to kindle less himself in 
bringing these glowing traditions before his 
reader, and in reality heightened their effect by 



WILLIAM WIRT. &1 

a kind of reluctant exhibition of their energy and 
unanimousness, we are tempted to think he 
would more completely have won the conviction 
which we cannot reasonably withhold from the 
evidence he has adduced. The same thing 
seems true of the companion-pieces of the princi- 
pal portrait. They were a body of men alto- 
gether remarkable and splendid, and Mr. Jeffer- 
son, through whose hands the author's manu- 
script passed, declares the characters to be " inimi- 
tably and justly drawn." Tradition, it must be 
remarked, so uniform in respect to Mr. Henry's 
oratory is no less so as to his defects ; and it is 
another vindication of the biographer's impar- 
tiaUty, that these are noted without hesitation in 
his memoir. In both he echoed the voice of 
contemporaries, and in regard to his eloquence, 
only joined in a general acclaim. 

These observations are exceeding our limits, 
or we might remark it as somewhat curious, that 
the "action" which Demosthenes has been 
thought to have disproportionably lauded, and 
which, by universal concurrence, formed the 
secret and chief charm of Patrick Henry's elocu- 
tion, has in some sort caused his pretensions to 
be doubted. Unwilling to impute such extraor- 
dinary effects to such a cause, we prefer to reject 



82 BIOGRAPHY OF 

at once both the judgment of the Greek orator 
and this modern evidence of its truth ; thus 
denying to the critic the confirmation of the ex- 
ample, and to the example the authority of the 
critic. There are, however, brief passages of 
Henry's, as they are given in his life, which, 
mutilated as they have come down to us, are 
worthy of Chatham, and worthy of any orator, 
in any age. The biography, we think, is not 
hkely to perish either from want of interest in its 
Bubject, or of skill in the writer, who, without 
alteration of the facts — which, besides the popu- 
lar belief, we have the venerable authority 
already quoted, that he took great pains " to sift 
and scrutinize," — but by subduing the warm 
tone of the narrative, may render it an enduring 
portion of our popular literature. The subject 
has been pursued to such length, however, 
chiefly from its interest as a general question. 

In taking leave of it we may add the opinion 
of a writer* who, though snatched away in the 
morning of a promising day, may be cited on a 
subject which he has treated with no less know- 
ledge than eloquence. The passage is equally 
complimentary to Patrick Henry and Mr. Wirt. 

♦ The late Francis Walkrr Gilmer. 



WILLIAM WIRT. 83 

" Had one," he says, " with so rich a genius, with 
such a soul for eloquence, as Mr. Wirt certainly 
possesses, seen Mr. Henry in some of his grandest 
exhibitions, I should not now have to deplore the 
want of a finished orator at any American bar. 
But that bright meteor shot from its mid-heaven 
sphere too early for Mr. Wirt, and the glory of 
his art descended with him." As the most effect- 
ive and correct description of Mr. Wirt's oratory 
to which we can add nothing, and which we 
should be unwilling to retrench, we extract the 
remainder of this passage, though it is probably 
familiar to many. The reader may recollect that 
the elocution of Mr. Wirt was originally faulty 
in several particulars. Of these defects his nice 
ear and good taste rendeied him painfully sensi 
ble, and he bent himself determinedly to the cure 
of them ; with what success will appear from 
Mr. Gilmer's picture of him. 

"But I have seen no one who has such natural advan- 
tages and so many qualities requisite for genuine eloquence 
as Mr. Wirt. His person is dignified and commanding; 
his countenance open, manly and playful; his voice clear 
and musical ; and his whole appearance truly oratorical. 
Judgment and imagination hold a divided dominion over his 
mind, and each is so conspicuous that it is difficult to decide 
which is ascendant. His diction unites force, purity, variety 
and splendour, more perfectly than that of any speaker I 
have heard, except Mr. Pinkney. He had great original 



84 BIOGRAPHY OF 

powers of action, but they have been totally unassisted by 
the contemplation of a good model. His wit is prompt, 
pure, and brilliant, but these lesser scintillations of fancy ara 
lost in the blaze of his reasoning and declamation. 

"His premises are always broad and distinctly laid down, 
his deductions are faultless, and his conclusions of course, 
irresistible from the predicate. In this he resembles what 
he has observed of Mr. Marshall, admit his first proposition 
and the conclusion is inevitable. The march of his mind 
is direct to its object, tlie evolutions by which he attains it, 
are so new and beautiful, and apparently necessary to the 
occasion, that your admiration is kept alive, your fancy 
delighted, and your judgment convinced, through every 
stage of the process. He leaves no objection to his reason- 
ing unanswei-ed, but satisfies every doubt as he advances. 
His power over his suliject is so great, and so judiciously 
du'ccted, that he sweeps the whole field of discussion, rarely 
leaves any thing for his assistants to glean, and sometimes 
anticipating the position of his enemy's battery, renders it 
useless, by destroying before-hand the materials of which 
its fortifications were to be erected. He has been sometimes 
known to answer, by anticipation, all the arguments of the 
opposing counsel so perfectly, as to leave him nothing to 
say which had not been better said already. These great 
combinations are so closely connected, the succession of 
their parts so natural, easy, and rapid, that the whole opera- 
tion, offensive and defensive, appears but one effort. There 
is no weak point in his array, no chink in the whole line of 
his extended works. Then the sweet melody of voice, the 
beautiful decorations of fancy, the easy play of a powerful 
i-eason, by which all this is accomplished, amaze and delight. 
His pathos is natural and impressive; there is a pastoral 
simplicity and tenderness in his pictures of distress, when 
he describes female innocence, helplessnes.''", and beauty, 



WILLIAM WIRT. 85 

which the husband on whom she smiled should have guarded 
even from the winds of heaven which might visit it too 
rouglily, "shivering at midnight on the winter banks of tlie 
Ohio, and mingling her tears with the torrent, which froze 
as they fell;" it is not a theatrical trick, to move a fleeting 
pity, but a deep and impressive appeal to the dignified chari- 
ties of our nature."* 

An opinion prevailed perhaps, at one time, 
that it was rather in the ornate than the severer 
quahties of oratory that Mr. Wirt excelled. Ex- 
cept indeed that some of his brilliancies, if we 
may call them so, found their way into popular 
works, there was, perhaps, no better reason for 
suppQsing a person who wrote with taste, and 
spoke with force and feeling, on that account to 
want argument, than for the converse in the 
case of the attorney, who, as the jest goes, was 
reported to be a great lawyer because he was a 
miserable speaker. Those who knew him the 
earhest, concur that the striking feature of his 
mind " was the power of argument, of close, con- 
nected, cogent, logical reasoning." In the un- 
foreseen points that arise before a court, where the 
argument of counsel must be instant and extem- 
poraneous, he was always eminent for ready force 
as well as for lucid order. The writer remembers 



♦ Gilmer's Sketches, &c. pp. 38, 39. 
8 



S6 BIOGRAPHY OF 

the first forensic encounter between him and Mr. 
Pinkney, in Baltimore, and the impression also 
of his speech compared with that of his formida- 
ble rival. If, to use an old figure, he was struck 
by the elaborate Gothic beauties of the one, he 
drew a calmer pleasure from the Grecian ele- 
gance and proportions of the other, where grace 
was subservient to utility, and all the parts were 
happily disposed toward the main design. In 
the structure of his speeches there is much of 
what duintilian calls the " apta junctura." He 
seemed, however, in his own words, " not deco- 
rated for pomp, but armed for battle." Yet this 
opinion of his ornament, " scilicet nimia facilitas 
magis quam facultas," appeared to have been 
somewhat diffused ; for it is not long since an 
eminent judge, on first hearing the advocate 
in some cause of moment, observed to him that 
he did not know till then that he was a logician. 
The well known description of Blennerhasset 
and his Island has been thought no more than 
the creation of the orator's fancy. But it is as 
well known to many, that the evidence on which 
that passage of the speech was founded, (which 
does not appear in the report of the trial,) was 
quite as high-wrought in the description. In 
fine, we may appositely quote on this subject, a 



WILLIAM WIRT. 87 

passage in the Dialogue concerning Oratory. 
The unknown but graceful writer says of some of 
Cicero's earlier orations, " Firmus sane paries, et 
duraturusj sed non satis expolitus et splendens ;" 
and he continues the figure naturally, " Non eo 
tantum volo tecto tegi, quod imbrem ac ven- 
tum arceat, sed etiam quod visum et oculos 
delectet." 

Mr. Wirt has appeared in causes in Philadel- 
vphia «and Boston. Of his many arguments 
before the Supreme Court it is not our purpose 
to speak ; but an extract may not be unaccepta- 
ble from a speech in what will be recollected as 
the "steam-boat case," decided by that court in 
1824. It was a cause of deep interest, and import- 
ant not only from the nature of the individual 
rights involved, but on account of the collisions 
which gave rise to it, of the state of New- York, 
with those of Connecticut and New Jersey. The 
arguments of counsel, — Webster and Wirt for 
the appellant, Oakly and Emmet for the appel- 
lee, — w^ere most able and profound, and the 
papers of the day, which were much occupied 
with the cause, dwelt with emphasis on the 
ability of the Attorney-General's speech, particu- 
larly of the concluding passages, in which with 
rare felicity he had retorted on his eminent 



88 BIOGRAPHY OP 

antagonist, Mr. Emmet, a quotation of the latter 
from Virgil. 

The Attorney-General observed, that his learn- 
ed friend (Mr. Emmet) had eloquently personi- 
fied the state of New- York, casting her eyes 
over the ocean, witnessing every where the 
triumph of her genius, and exclaiming, in the 
language of ^neas, 

" 'Cluseregio interris, nostri non plense laboris V 

" Sir, it was not in the moment of triumph, nor with the 
feelings of triumph, that ^neas uttered that exclamation. 
It was when, with his faithful Achates by his side, he was 
surveying the works of art with which the palace of Car- 
thage was adorned, and his attention had been caught by a 
representation of the battles of Troy. There he saw the 
sons of Atreus, and Priam, and the fierce Achilles. The 
whole extent of his misfortunes ; the loss and desolation of 
his friends ; the fall of his beloved country ; rushed upon 
his recollection. 

'Constitit etlachrymans, quis j^ara locus, inquit, Achate, 
Cluae regio in terris, nostri non plenae laboris V 

" Sir, the passage may hereafter have a closer application 
to the cause than my eloquent and classical friend intended. 
For if the state of things which has already commenced, is 
to go on; if the spirit of hostility which already exists in three 
of our states, is to catch by contagion, and spread among the 
rest, as, from the progress of the human passions, and the 
unavoidable conflict of interests, it will too surely do; what 
are we to expect'? Civil wars, arising from far inferior 
causss, have desolated some of the fairest provinces of the 



WILLIAM WIRT. 89 

earth. Histoiy is full of the afflicting narratives of such 
wars ; and it will continue to be her mournful office to record 
them, till ' time shall be no longer.' It is a momentous de- 
cision which this court is called on to make. Here are three 
states almost on the eve of war. It is the high province of 
this court to interpose its benign and mediatorial influence. 
The framers of our admirable constitution would have de- 
served the wreath of immortality which they have acquired, 
had they done nothing else than to establish this guardian 
tribunal, to harmonize the jarring elements in our system. 
But, sir, if you do not interpose your friendly hand, and 
extirpate the seeds of anarchy which New-York has sown, 
you loill have civil war. The war of legislation which has 
already commenced, will, according to its usual course, 
become a war of blows. Your country will be shaken with 
civil strife. Your republican institutions will perish in the 
conflict. Your constitution will fall. The last hope of 
nations will be gone. And what will be tlie effect upon the 
rest of the world 1 Look abroad at the scenes now passing 
on our globe, and judge of that effect. The friends of free 
government throughout the earth, who have been heretofore 
animated by our example, and have cheerfully cast their 
glance to it, as to their polar star, to guide them through the 
stormy seas of revolution, will witness our fall, with dismay 
and despair. The arm that is every where lifted in the 
cause of liberty, will drop unnerved by the warrior's side. 
Despotism will have its day of triumph, and will accom- 
plish the purpose at which it too certainly aims. It will 
cover the earth with the mantle of mourning. Then, sir, when 
New- York shall look upon this scene of ruin, if she have the 
generous feeungs which I believe her to have, it will not be 
with her head aloft, in the pride of conscious triumph, * her 
rapt soul sitting in her eyes.' — No, sir, no ! Dejected with 
shame and confusion, drooping under the weight of her 



96 BIOGRAPHY OP 

sorrow, with a voice suifocated with despair, well may she 

then exclaim, 



Cluis jam locus. 



Cluae regio in terris, nostri non plenae laboris V " 

Mr. Wirt has just entered his sixtieth year, 
and still resides in Baltimorej an emuient orna 
ment of a state which may number with some 
pride among her sons, a Dulany, a Chase, a 
Martin, and a Pinkney. For the narrative 
given in the preceding pages, we have the brief 
apology of the classic : " hujus vitam narrare, 
fiduciam potius morum, quam arrogantiam." 



The subject of the above memoir has acquired 
a new interest with the public from his nomina- 
tion by the Anti-Masonic Convention, assembled 
at Baltimore in October last, as a candidate for 
the Presidency of the United States ; an emi- 
nence to which he brings the pretensions of pure 
morals and native dignity; of a high intellect, 
clear, vigorous and direct, refined by knowledge, 
and by a large acquaintance with mankind, espe- 
cially with the eminent talents of his age ; of 
profound constitutional learning, and of an inti- 
mate knowledge of the points and course of our 



WILLIAM WIRT. 91 

national policy, acquired during a period of 
twelve years, duriiig which, in the capacity of 
Attorney-General, he held a seat in the cabi 
net. No man has more integrity in private life, 
and none would bring into the administration 
of public affairs a more sincere, candid, elevated 
or patriotic purpose. Though, restrained by 
personal and professional considerations, he has 
never mingled in the competitions of politics, he 
has spoken and written on many of the questions 
which have agitated and divided the public 
opinion. Such a mind, with such opportunities 
and occasions of observation, must have cast 
over the whole field of our policy, that broad and 
comprehensive glance which justifies this recent 
proof of the confidence of a considerable portion 
of the public 



THB 



LETTERS 

OP THE 

BRITISH SPY 



ADVERTISEMENT. 

The publishers having become possessed of 
a copy of "The British Spy," which has passed 
through the hands of the author, eagerly em- 
brace an opportunity of submitting a correct 
edition of that work to the patronage of the 
public. These letters were originally inserted 
in a daily journal ; and they appeared with all 
the imperfections to which such a mode of pub- 
lication is unavoidably liable. In the present 
edition, a variety of errors have been corrected ; 
and nothing has been spared which it was 
supposed could add to its value. 

Of the Hterary merit of a work which has 
passed the ordeal of criticism with honour, not 
only to the author but to his country, it would 
be impertinent to speak. Common fame has 
decided it to be the fruit of an American p**n ; 



ADVERTISEMENT. 

and classical taste has pronounced it to be the 
offspring of genius. To those who would in- 
culcate the degrading doctrine, that this is the 
country 

" Where Genius sickens, and where Fancy dies,"* 

we would offer the letters of the British Spy 
as an unquestionable evidence that America is 
entitled to a high rank in the repubhc of letters ; 
and that the empyreal flame may be respired 
under any region. 

* Clifton. 



TO THE EDITOR OP THE VZBGINU ARGUS. 

Sir, 

The manuscript, from which the following letters are 
extracted, was found in the bed-chamber of a boarding-house 
in a seaport town of Virginia. The gentleman, who had 
previously occupied tliat chamber, is represented, by the 
mistress of the house, to have been a meek and harmless 
young man, who meddled very little with the affairs of 
others, and concerning whom no one appeared sufficiently 
interested to make any inquiry. As it seems from the 
manuscript that the name by which he passed was not his 
real name, and as, moreover, she knew nothing of his 
residence, so that she was totally ignorant to whom and 
whither to direct it, she considered the manuscript as law- 
ful prize, and made a present of it to me. It seems to be a 
copy of letters written by a young Englishman of rank, 
during a tour through the United States, in 1803, to a 
member of the British parliament They are dated from 
almost every part of the United States, contain a great 
deal of geographical description, a delineation of every 
character of note among us, some literary disquisitions, 

with a great mixture of moral and political observation, 
9 



The letters ore prettily written. Persons of every de- 
scription will find in them a light and agreeable enter- 
tainment; and to the younger part of your readers they 
may not be uninstructive. For the present I select a 
few which were written from this place, and by way of 
distinction, will give them to you under the title of tbo 
British Spy, 



THE BRITISH SPY. 



LETTER I. 

Richmond, Septeviber 1. 

Vou complain, my dear S , that 

akliough I have been resident in Richmond 
upward of six months, you have heard nothing 
from me since my arrival. The truth is, that I 
had suspended writing until a more intimate 
acquaintance with the people and their country 
should furnish me with the materials for a cor- 
respondence. Having now collected those mate- 
rials, the apology ceases, and the correspondence 
begins. But first, a word of myself. 

I still continue to wear the mask, and most 
willingly exchange the attentions, which would 
be paid to my rank, for the superior and exqui- 
site pleasure of inspecting this country and this 
people, without attracting to myself a single eye 
of curiosity, or awakening a shade of suspicion. 
Under my assumed name, I gain an admission 



100 THE BRITISH SPY. 

close enough to trace, at leisure, every line of 
the American character ; while the plainness, or 
rather humility of my appearance, my manners 
and conversation, put no one on his guard, but 
enable me to take the portrait of nature, as it 
were, asleep and naked. Beside, there is some- 
thing of innocent roguery in this masquerade, 
which I am playing, that sorts very well with 
the sportiveness of my temper. To sit and decoy 
the human heart from behind all its disguises : 
to watch the capricious evolutions of unrestrained 
nature, frisking, curvetting and gambolling at 
her ease, with the curtain of ceremony drawn 
up to the very sky — Oh ! it is delightful ! 

You are perhaps surprised at my speaking of 
the attentions which would be paid in this 
country to my rank. You will suppose that I 
have forgotten where I am : no such thing. I 
remember well enough that I am in Yirginia, 
that state, which, of all the rest, plumes herself 
most highly on the democratic spirit of her prin- 
ciples. Her political principles are indeed demo- 
cratic enough in all conscience. Rights and 
privileges, as regulated by the constitution of the 
state, belong in equal degree to all the citizens ; 
and Peter Pindar's .remark is perfectly true of 
the people of this country, that '-'every black 



THE BRITISH SPY. 101 

guard scoundrel is a king."* Nevertheless, 
there exists in Virginia a species of social rank, 
from which no country can, I presume, be en- 
tirely free. I mean that kind of rank which 
arises from the different degrees of wealth and 
of intellectual refinement. These must introduce 
a style of living and of conversation, the former 
of which a poor man cannot attain, while an 
ignorant one would be incapable of enjoying the 
latter. It seems to me that from these causes, 
wherever they may exist, circles of society, 
strongly discriminated, must inevitably result. 
And one of these causes exists in full force in 
Virginia ; for, however they may vaunt of 
'• equal liberty in church and state," they have 
but little to boast on the subject of equal property. 
Indeed there is no country, I believe, where 
property is more unequally distributed than in 
Virginia. This inequality struck me with pe- 
culiar force in riding through the lower counties 
on the Potomac. Here and there a stately aris- 
tocratic palace, with all its appurtenances, strikes 
the view ; while all around, for many miles, no 
other buildings are to be seen but the little smoky 
huts and log cabins of poor, laborious, ignorant 

* The reader needs scarcely to be reminded that the writer 
is a Briton, and true to his character. 

0* 



102 THE BRITISH SPY. 

tenants. And, what is very ridiculous, these 
tenants, while they approach the great house^ 
cap in hand, with all the fearful, trembUng sub- 
mission of the lowest feudal vassals, boast in 
their court-yards, with obstreperous exultation, 
that they live in a land of freemen, a land of 
equal liberty and equal rights. Whether this 
debasing sense of inferiority, which I have men- 
tioned, be a remnant of their colonial character, 
or whether it be that it is natural for poverty and 
impotence to look up with veneration to wealth, 
and power, and rank, I cannot decide. For my 
own part, however, I have ascribed it to the 
latter cause ; and I have been in a great degree 
confirmed in the opinion, by observing the atten- 
tions which were paid by the most genteel people 

here to the son of lord 

You know the circumstances in which his 
lordship left Virginia: that so far from being 
popular, he carried with him the deepest execra- 
tions of these people. Even now, his name is 
seldom mentioned here but in connexion with 
terms of abhorrence or contempt. Aware of 

this, and believing it impossible that 

was indebted to his father, for all the parade of 
respect which was shown to him, I sought, in 
his own personal accomplishments, a solution of 



THE BRITISH SPY. 103 

the phenomenon. But I sought in vain. Without 
one soUtary ray of native genius, without one 
adventitious beam of science, without any of 
those traits of soft benevolence which are so uni- 
versally captivating, I found his mind dark and 
benighted, his manners bold, forward and 
assuming, and his whole character evidently 
inflated with the consideration that he was the 
son of a lord. His deportment was so evidently 
dictated by this consideration, and he regarded 
the Virginians so palpably, in the humiliating 
light of inferior plebeians, that I have often 
wondered how^ such a man, and the son too of 
so very unpopular a father, escaped from this 
country without personal injury, or, at least, per- 
sonal insult. I am now persuaded, that this 
impunity, and the great respect which was paid 
to him, resulted solely from his noble descent, 
and was nothing more than the tribute which 
man pays either to imaginary or real superiority. 
On this occasion, I stated my sui-prise to a young 
Virginian, who happened to belong to the demo- 
cratic party. He, however, did not choose to 
admit the statement; but asserted, that whatever 

respect had been shown to , 

proceeded solely from the federalists ; and that it 
was an unguarded evolution of their private 



104 THE BRITISH SPY. 

attachment to monarchy and its appendages. 1 
then stated the subject to a very sensible gentle 
man, whom I knew to belong to the federal pha 
lanx. Not willing to degrade his party by 
admitting that they would prostrate themselves 
before the empty shadow of nobility, he alleged! 
that nothing had been manifested towards 

young , beyond the hospitaUty 

which was due to a genteel stranger ; and thai 
if there had been any thing of parade on his 
account, it was attributable only to the ladies, who 
had merely exercised their wonted privilege of 
coquetting it with a fine young fellow. But 
notwithstanding all this, it was easy to discern 
in the look, the voice, and whole manner, with 
which gentlemen as well as ladies of both parties 

saluted and accosted young , a 

secret spirit of respectful diffidence, a species of 
silent, reverential abasement, which, as it could 
not have been excited by his personal qualities, 
must have been homage to his rank. Judge, 
then, whether I have not just reason to appre- 
hend, that on the annunciation of my real name, 
the curtain of ceremony would fall, and nature 
would cease to play her pranks before me. 

Richmond is built, as you will remember, on the 
north side of James river, and at the head of tid? 



THE BRITISH SPY. 105 

water. There is a manuscript in this state which 
relates a curious anecdote concerning the origin 
of this town. The land hereabout was owned 
by Col. William Byrd. This gentleman, with 
the former proprietor of the land at the head of 
tide water on Appomatox river, was appointed, 
it seems, to mn the line between Virginia and 
North Carolina. The operation was a most 
tremendous one ; for, in the execution of it, they 
had to penetrate and pass quite through the great 
Dismal Swamp. It would be almost impossible 
to give you a just conception of the horrors of 
this enterprise. Imagine to yourself an immense 
morass, more than forty miles in length and 
twenty in breadth, its soil a black, deep mire, 
covered with a stupendous forest of juniper and 
cypress trees, whose luxuriant branches, inter- 
woven throughout, intercept the beams of the 
sun and teach day to counterfeit the night This 
forest, which until that time, perhaps, the human 
foot had never violated, had become the secure 
retreat of ten thousand beasts of prey. The 
adventurers, therefore, beside the almost endless 
labour of felling trees in a proper direction to 
form a footway throughout, moved amid per- 
petual terrors, and each night had to sleep en 
mUitaire. upon their arms, surrounded with the 



106 THE BRITISH SPi, 

deafening, soul-chilling yell of those hunger- 
smitten lords of the desert. It was, one night, 
as they lay in the midst of scenes like these, that 
Hope, that never-failing friend of man, paid them 
a consoling visit, and sketched in brilliant pros- 
pect the plans of Richmond and Petersburg.* 

Richmond occupies a very picturesque and 
most beautiful situation. I have never met with 
such an assemblage of striking and interesting 
objects. The town, dispersed over hills of various 
shapes ; the river descending from west to east, 
and obstructed by a multitude of small islands, 
clumps of trees, and myriads of rocks ; among 
which it tumbles, foams, and roars, constituting 
what are called the falls ; the same river, at the 
lower end of the town, bending at right angles 
lo the south, and winding reluctantly off for 
many miles in that direction ! its polished sur- 
face caught here and there by the eye, but 
more generally covered from the view by trees ; 
among which the white sails of approaching and 
departing vessels exhibit a curious and interest- 
ing appearance : then again, on the opposite 

* So at least, speaks the manuscript account which Col. 
Byrd has left of this expedition, and which is now in the 
nands of some of his descendants; perhaps of the family at 
VVestover. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 107 

side, llie little town of Manchester, built on a 
hill, which, sloping gently to the river, opens 
the whole town to the view, interspersed, as it 
is, with vigorous, and flourishing poplars, and 
surrounded to a great distance by green plains 
and stately woods — all these objects, falling at 
once under the eye, constitute, by far, the most 
finely varied and most animated landscape that 
I have ever seen. A mountain, like the Blue 
Ridge, in the western horizon, and the rich tint 
with w^hich the hand of a Pennsylvanian farmer 
would paint the adjacent fields, would make this 
a more enchanting spot than even Deraascus is 
described to be. 

I will endeavour to procure for you a perspec- 
tive view of Richmond, with the embellishments 
of fancy which I have just mentioned ; and you 
will do me the honour to give it a place in your 
pavilion. 

Adieu for the present, my dear S 

May the perpetual smiles of heaven be yours. 



108 THE BRITISH SPY. 



LETTER II. 



Richmond, Septemler 7. 

Almost every day, My dear S . . . . , some 
new evidence presents itself in support of the 
Abbe Raynal's opinion, that this continent was 
once covered by tlie ocean, from which it has 
gradually emerged. But that this emersion is, 
even comparatively speaking, of recent date, can- 
not be admitted ; unless the comparison be made 
with the creation of the earth ; and even then, in 
order to justify the remark, the era of the crea- 
tion must, I fear, be fixed much further back than 
the period Avhich has been inferred from the 
Mosaic account.* 

* Some error has certainly happened in computing the 
era of the earth's creation from the five books of Moses. 
Voltaire informs vis, that certain French philosophers, who 
visited China, inspected the official register or history of the 
eclipses of the sun and moon, which, it seems, has been con- 
tinually kept in that country ; that on calculating them back, 
they were all found correct, and conducted those philosophers 
to a period, (I will not undertake to speak with certainty of 
the time, but I think,) twenty-three centuries before the 
Mosaic era. It is notorious, however, that the Chinese 
plume themselves on the antiquity of their country; and in 



xHE BRITISH SPY. 109 

The following facts are authenticated beyond 
any kind of doubt. During the last spring a 
gentleman in the neighbourhood of Williams- 
order to prop this, it would have been just as easy for the 
Chinese astronomers to have fabricated and dressed up the 
register in question, by posterior calculations, as for the 
French astronomers to have made their retrospective exami- 
nation of the accuracy of those eclipses. The same science 
precisely was requisite for both pui-poses ; and although the 
improvement of the arts and sciences in China, was found 
by the first Eui-opeans who went amongst them, to bear no 
proportion to the antiquity of the country, yet there is no 
reason to doubt that the Chinese mandarins were at least as 
competent to the calculation of an eclipse as the Shepherds 
of Egypt. Indeed we are, I believe, expressly told, that the 
Chinese, long before they were visited by the people of 
Europe, had been in the habit of using a species of astrono- 
mical apparatus ; and of stamping almanacs from plates or 
blocks, many hundred years, even before printing was dis- 
covered in Europe. I see no great reason, therefore, to rely 
with very implicit confidence on the register of China. 
Indeed I am very little disposed to build my faith, as to any 
historical fact, on evidence perfectly within the reach of 
human art and imposture; comprehending all writings, 
inscriptions, literary or liieroglyphic, medals, &c. which 
tend either to flatter our passion for the marvellous, or 
aggrandize the particular nation in whose bosom they are 
found. And, therefore, togetlier with the Chinese register, I 
throw out of the consideration of this question another record 
which goes to the same purpose ; I mean the Chaldaic manu- 
script found by Alexander in the city of Babylon. 

The inferences reported by Mr. Brvdone, as having been 

10 



HO TIIK BRITISH SPY, 

burg, about sixty miles below this place, in dig- 
ging a ditch on his farm, discovered about four 
or five feet below the surface of the earth, a con- 
drawn by Recupero, from the lavas of mount Etna (those 
stupendous records which no human art or imposture could 
possibly have fabricated) deserve, I think, much more serious 
attention. They are subject, indeed, to one of the preceding 
objections, to wit : that the data, from which all the subsequent 
calculations are drawn, are inscriptions : appealing not only 
to our passion for the marvellous, but flattering the vanity of 
the Sicilians, by establishing the great age of their mountain, 
at once their curse and their blessing. These inscriptions, 
however, do not rest merely on their own authority: they 
allege a fact which is very strongly countenanced by recent 
and unerring observation. As Biydone may not be in the 
hands of every person who may chance to possess and read 
this bagatelle, and as this subject is really curious and inter- 
esting, I beg leave to subjoin those parts of that traveller's 
nighly entertaining letters which relate to it. 

" The last lava we crossed, before our arrival there (Jaci 
Reale) is of vast extent. I thought we never should have 
had done with it ; it certainly is not less than six or seven 
miles broad, and appears in many places to be of an enor- 
mous depth. 

" When we came near the sea, I was desirous to see what 
form it had assumed in meeting with the water. I went to 
examine it, and found it had driven back the waves for 
upward of a mile, and had foiTned a large, black, high prom- 
ontory, where, before, it was deep water. This lava, I 
imagined, from its barrenness, for it is, as yet, covered with 
a veiy scanty soil, had run from the mountain only a few 
SL^es ago; but was surprised to be informed by Signor Recu- 



THE BRITIs^H SPY. Ill 

siderable portion of the skeleton of a whale. 
Several fragments of the ribs and other parts of 
the system were found; and all the vertebrcB 

pero, the historiographer of Etna, that this very lava is men- 
tioned by Diodorus Sicukis to have burst from Etna in the 
time of the second Punic war, when Syracuse was besieged 
by the Romans. A detachment was sent from Taurominum 
to the relief of the besieged. They were stopped on their 
march by tliis stream of lava, which having reached the sea 
before their arrival at the foot of the mountain, had cut off 
their passage, and obliged them to return by the back of 
Etna, upwards of a hundred miles about. His authority for 
this, he tells me, was taken from inscriptions on Roman 
monuments found on this lava, and that it was likewise well 
ascertained by many of the old Sicilian authors. Now as 
this is about two thousand years ago, one would imagine, if 
lavas have a regular progress in becoming fertile fields, that 
this must long ago have become at least arable ; this, how- 
ever, is not the case : and it is, as yet, only covered with a 
very scanty vegetation, and incapable of producing either 
corn or vines. There are indeed pretty large trees growing 
in the crevices which are full of a rich earth; but in all 
probability, it will be some hundred years yet, before there is 
enough of it to render this land of any use to the proprietors. 

"It is cm-ious to consider, that the surface of this black 
and bai-ren matter, in process of time, becomes one of the 
most fertile soils upon earth. But what must be the time to 
bring it to its utmost perfection, when after two thousand 
years, it is still, in most places, but a barren rock?" — Vol. I. 
Letter 6. 

" Signior Recupero, who obligingly engages to be our 
cicerone, has shown us some curious remains of antiquity; 



112 THE BRITISH 8PT. 

regularly arranged and very little impaired as to 
their figure. The spot on which this skeleton 
was found, lies about two miles from the nearest 
shore of James river, and fifty or sixty from 
the Atlantic Ocean. The whole phenomenon 
bore the clearest evidence that the animal had 
perished in its native element ; and as the ocean 
is the nearest resort of the whale, it follows that 



but they have been all so shaken and shattered by the moun • 
tain, that hardly any thing is to be found entire. 

" Near to a vault, which is now thirty feet below ground, 
and has, probably, been a burial place, there is a draw-well, 
where there are several strata of lavas, with earth to a conside- 
rable thickness over the surface of each stratum. Recupero has 
made use of this as an argument to prove the great antiquity of 
the mountain. For if it require two thousand years or upward, 
to form but a scanty soil on the surface of a lava, there must 
have been more than that space of time betwixt each of the 
eruptions which have formed the strata. But what shall we 
say of a pit they sunk near to Jaci of a great depth. They 
pierced through seven distinct lavas, one under the other, the 
surfaces of which were parallel, and most of them covered 
with a thick bed of rich earth. Now, says he, the eruption 
which formed the lowest of these lavas, if we may be allowed 
to reason from analogy, must have flowed from the mountain 
at least fourteen thousand years ago." — Vol. I. Letter 7. 
"Whereas the computation inferred, but without doubt inac- 
curately, from the Pentateuch, makes the earth itself only 
between five and six thousand years old. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 113 

the ocean must once have covered the country, at 
least as high up as WilHamsburg. 

Again, in digging several wells lately in this 
town, the teeth of sharks were found from sixty 
to ninety or a hundred feet below the surface of 
the earth. The probability is that these teeth 
were deposited by the shark itself; and as this 
fish is never known to infest very shallow 
streams, the conclusion is clear that this whole 
country has once been buried under several fath- 
oms of water. At all events, these teeth must 
be considered as ascertaining what was once the 
surface of the earth here ; which surface is very 
little higher than that of James river. Now if it 
be considered that there has been no perceptible 
difference wrought in the figure or elevation of 
the coast, nor, consequently, in the precipitation 
of the interior streams since the earliest recorded 
discovery of Virginia, which was two hundred 
years ago, it will follow, that James . river must, 
for many hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, 
have been running, at least here, with a very 
rapid, headlong current; the friction whereof 
must certainly have rendered the channel much 
deeper than it was at the time of the deposition 
of these teeth. The result is clear, that the sur- 
face of the stream, which even now, after all this 
10* 



114 THE BRITISH SPY. 

friction and consequent depression, is so nearly 
on a level with the site of the shark's teeth, 
must, originally, have been much higher. I 
take this to be an irrefragable proof, that the land 
here was then inundated ; and as there is no 
ground between this and the Atlantic, higher 
than that on which Richmond is built, it seems 
to me indisputably certain, that the whole of 
this beautiful country was once covered with a 
dreary waste of water.* 

* An elegant and well informed writer on the theory of the 
earth, under the signature of " An Inquirer," whose remarks 
were suggested by the perusal of this letter of the British 
Spy, observes that sea shells and other marine substances 
are found in every explored part of the world, " on the lofti- 
est mountains of Europe and the still loftier Andes of South 
America." As tlie British Spy was not writing a regular 
and elaborate treatise on the origin of the earth, he did not 
deem it material to congregate all the facts which have been 
seen, and supposed, in relation to this subject. 

Whether the British Spy is to be considered as an Eng- 
lishman of rank on a tour through America, and writing the 
above letter in Richmond to his friend in London; or 
whether he is to be considered as one of our own citizens 
disposed to entertain the people of Richmond and its vicinity 
with a light and amusing speculation on the origin of their 
country, in either instance it was both moi*e natural, and 
more interesting that the speculation should appear to have 
grown out of recent facts discovered in their own town or 
neighbourhood, and with which they are all supposed to be 



THE BRITISH SPY. 115 

To what curious and interesting reflections 
does this subject lead us? Over this hill on 
which I am now sitting and writing at my ease, 
and from which I look with delight on the 
landscape that smiles around me — over this hill 
and over this landscape, the billows of the ocean 
have rolled in wild and dreadful fury, while the 
leviathan, the whale and all the monsters of the 
deep, have disported themselves amid the fearful 
tempest. 

Where was then the shore of the ocean? 
From this place, for eighty miles to the west- 
ward, the ascent of the country is very gradual ; 
to and even up the Blue Ridge, marine shells 
and other phenomena are found, which demon- 
strate that that country too, has been visited by 
the ocean. How then has it emerged ? Has 
it been by a sudden convulsion? Certainly 
not. No observing man, w^lio has ever tra- 
velled from the Blue Ridge to the Atlan- 
tic, can doubt that this emersion has been 
effected by very slow gradations. For as you 
advance to the east, the proofs of the former sub- 
mersion of the country thicken upon you. On 

conversant, than on distant and controvertible facts, which 
It was not important to the inquiry, whether they knew or 
believed, or not. 



liO THE BRITISH SPY. 

the shores of York river, the bones of whales 
abound ; and I have been not a httle amused in 
walking on the sand beach of that river during 
the recess of the tide, and looking up at the high 
cliff or bank above me, to observe strata of sea 
shells not yet calcined, like those which lay on 
the beach under my feet, interspersed with strata 
of earth (the joint result, no doubt, of sand and 
putrid vegetables) exhibiting at once a sample of 
the manner in which the adjacent soil had been 
formed, and proof of the comparatively recent 
desertion of the waters. 

Upon the whole, every thing here tends to con- 
firm the ingenious theory of Mr. Buffon ; that 
the eastern coasts of continents are enlarged by 
the perpetual revolution of the earth from w^est 
to east, which has the obvious tendency to con- 
glomerate the loose sands of the sea on the 
eastern coast ; while the tides of the ocean, 
drawn from east to west, against the revolving 
earth, contribute to aid the process, and hasten 
the alluvion. But admitting the Abbe Raynal's 
idea, that America is a far younger country than 
either of the other continents, or in other words, 
that America has emerged long since their for- 
mation, how did it happen that the materials, 
which compose this continent, were not accumu- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 117 

lated on the eastern coast of Asia l Was it that 
the present mountains of America, then protu- 
berances on the bed of the ocean, intercepted a 
part of the passing sands which would otherwise 
have been washed on the Asiatic shore, and thus 
became tiie rudiments of this vast continent ? If 
so, America is under much greater obHgations to 
her barren mountains, than she has hitherto 
supposed. 

But while Mr. Buffon's theory accounts very 
handsomely for the enlargement of the eastern 
coast, it offers no kind of reason for any exten- 
sion of the western ; on the contrary, the very 
causes assigned, to supply the addition to the 
eastern, seem at first view to threaten a diminu- 
tion of the western coast. Accordingly, Mr. 
Buffon, we see, has adopted also the latter idea ; 
and, in the constant abluvion from the western 
coast of one continent, has found a perennial 
source of materials for the eastern coast of that 
which lies behind it. This last idea, however, 
by no means quadrates with the hypothesis, that 
the mountains of America formed the original 
stamma of tlie continent ; for, on the latter sup- 
position, the mountains themselves would consti- 
tute the western coast ; since Mr. Buffon's theory 
precludes the idea of any accession in that quar- 



118 THE BRITSIII SPY. 

ter. But the mountains do not constitute the 
western coast. On the contrary, there is a 
wider extent of country between the great moun- 
tains in North America, and the Pacific or the 
northern oceans, than there is between the same 
mountains and the Atlantic ocean. Mr. Buffon's 
theory, therefore, however rational as to the 
eastern, becomes defective, as he presses it, in 
relation to the western coast ; unless, to accom- 
modate the theory, we suppose the total abrasion 
of some great mountain which originally consti- 
tuted the western limit, and which was itself, the 
embryon of this continent. But for many rea- 
sons, and particularly the present contiguity to 
Asia, at one part, where such a mountain, 
according to the hypothesis, must have run, the 
idea of any such limit will be thought rather too 
extravagant for adoption. The fact is, that Mr. 
Buffon has considered his theory rather in its 
operation on a continent already established, than 
on the birth or primitive emersion of a conti- 
nent from the ocean. 

As to the western part of this continent, I 
mean that which lies beyond the Alleghany 
mountains, if it were not originally gained from 
the oceauj it has received an accumulation of 
earth by no means less wonderful. Far beyond 



THE BRITISH SPY. 119 

the Ohio, in piercing the earth for water, the 
stumps of trees, bearing the most evident impres- 
sions of the axe, and on one of them the rust of 
consumed iron, have been discovered between 
ninety and a hundred feet below the present 
surface of the earth. This is a proof, by the by, 
not only that this immense depth of soil has 
been accumulated in that quarter ; but that that 
new country^ as the inhabitants of the Atlantic 
states call it, is, indeed, a very ancient one ; and 
that North America has undergone more revolu- 
tions in point of civiHzation, than have heretofore 
been thought of, either by the European or 
American philosophers. That part of this con- 
tinent, which borders on the western ocean, 
being almost entirely unknown, it is impossible 
to say whether it exhibit the same evidence of 
immersion which is found here. M'Kenzie, 
however, the only traveller who has ever pene- 
trated through this vast forest, records a curious 
tradition among some of the western tribes of 
Indians, to wit : that the world was once covered 
with water. The tradition is embellished, as 
usual with a number of very highly poetical fic- 
tions. The fact, which I suppose to be couched 
under it, is the ancient submersion of that part 
of the continent, which certainly looks much 



120 THE BRITISH SPY. 

Tnoie like a world than the petty territory that 
was inundated by Eucahon's flood. If I remem- 
ber aright, for I cannot immediately refer to the 
book, Stith, in his History of Virginia, has re- 
corded a similar tradition among the Atlantic 
tribes of Indians. I have no doubt that if 
M'Kenzie had been as well qualified for scientific 
research, as he was undoubtedly honest, firm and 
persevering, it would have been in his power to 
have thrown great lights on this subject, as it 
relates to the western country. 

For my own part, while I believe the present 
mountains of America to have constituted the 
original stamina of the continent, I believe at 
the same time, the western as well as the eastern 
country to be the effect of alluvion ; produced 
too by the same causes : the rotation of the 
earth, and the planetary attraction of the ocean. 

The perception of this will be easy and simple, 
if, instead of confounding the mind, by a wide 
view of the whole continent as it now stands, 
we carry back our imaginations to the time of 
its birth, and suppose some one of the highest 
pinnacles of the Blue Ridge to have just emerged 
above the surface of the sea. Now whether the 
rolling of the earth to the east give to the ocean, 
which floats loosely upon its bosom, an actual 



THE BRITISH SPY. 121 

counter-cuirent, to the west,* which is occasion- 
ally fuither accelerated by the motion of the 
tides in that direction, or whether this be not the 

* This idea, which is merely stated hypothetically , is con- 
sidered, by the Inquirer, as having been a position absolutely 
taken by the British Spy : and as the reverse principle, (to 
wit, that the motion of the watei's is taken from and corres- 
ponds with that of tlie solid earth,) is so well established, he 
concludes that it must have been contested by the British 
Spy through mere inadvertence. But, for my part, I do not 
perceive how this hypothetical idea of the British Spy is, at 
all, in collision with the doctrine of the diurnal or annual 
revolution of the terraqueous globe. 

The British Spy could not have been guilty of so great an 
aosurdity as to intend that the waters of the ocean deserted 
their bed and broke over the eastern coasts and lofty moun- 
tains of opposing continents, in order to maintain their actual 
counter-current to the west. It must have been clear to him, 
that the ocean, keeping its bed, must attend the motion of the 
earth, " not only on its axis, but in its orbit." But the ques- 
tion here is not as to the position of the whole ocean as it 
relates to the whole earth; the question is merely as to tlie loco- 
motion of tlie particles of the ocean, among themselves. For 
although the ocean, as well as the solid earth, must perform a 
complete revolution around their common axis once in twenty- 
four hours, it does not follow, as I take it, that the globules 
of the fluid ocean must, all this time, remain as fixed as the 
atoms of the solid earth : they certainly may and certainly 
have, from some cause or otlier, a subordinate motion among 
t}iemselves, frequently adverse to the general motion of the 
globe ; to wit, a current to the west. The atmosphere belongs 
as much to this globe as the waters of tlie ocean do : tliat is 
11 



l22 THE BRITISH SPY. 

case ; still to our newly emerged pinnacle, which 
is whirled, by the earth's motion, through the 
waters of the deep, the consequences will be the 

to say, it cannot any more than the ocean fly off and attach 
itself to any other planet. It feels, like the ocean, the gravi- 
tating power of the earth and the attraction of the neigh- 
bouring planets. It is affected, no doubt, very sensibly (at 
least the lower region of it) by the earth's diurnal rotation, 
and lilce the ocean, is compelled to attend her in her annual 
journey around the sun. But what of thisl Does the 
atmosphere remain fixed in such a manner, as that the part 
of it, which our antipodes are respiring at this moment, is to 
furnish our diet, our pabulum vita, twelve hours hence 1 
Certainly not; the atoms which compose the atmosphere 
are, we know, in spite of the earth's diurnal and annual mo- 
tion, agitated and impelled in every direction ; and so also, 
we equally well know, are the waters of the ocean. 

If the Inquirer, when he says that "the motion of the 
earth is communicated to every part of it, whether solid or 
fluid," intend that tlie motion of the loose and fluid particles 
of the ocean take, from the earth, a flux among themselves to 
the east, the result would be an actual current to the east; 
which is not pretended. If he mean, that the globules of the 
ocean, unaffected by any other cause than the motion of the 
earth, would always maintain the same position in relation 
to each other, he may, indeed, allege a principle which is 
well established ; but as it does not meet the approbation of 
my reason, and as I am not in the habit of reading merely 
that I may understand and believe, I must beg permission to 
enter my dissent to the principle. It would be dilBcult, if 
not impossible, so close as we are in the neighbourhood of 
♦Jie earth's attraction, to invent any apparatus by which a 



THE BRITISH SPY. 123 

same as if there were this actual and strong 
current. For while the waters will be continually 
accumulated on the eastern coast of this pinna- 
decisive experiment could be made on this subject. But, by 
the way of illustration, let us suppose the earth at rest; let 
us suppose the atmosphere, by the hand of the great Chymist 
who raised it into its present aeriform state, once more re- 
duced to a fluid; let us suppose it, like a great ocean, to sur- 
round the earth within the torrid zone, (partitioned at right 
angles, by two or tliree mountains running from north to 
to south) and all its parts reposing in a halcyon calm : let 
us then suppose the earth whirled on its axis to the east, 
what would be the probable effect 1 it is clear that the lower 
region of this superincumbent ocean would be most strongly 
bound by the earth's attraction ; it is equally clear that the 
stratum of globules, immediately in contact with the earth, 
would adhere more strongly thereto, than to the fluid stratum 
which rested upon it; while this adhesion to the surface of 
the earth would be assisted by the many rugged protuber- 
ances on that surface. Hence the first motion of the earth, the 
lowest part of tliis circumambient ocean, being most power- 
fully attracted and attached to the earth, would slide under 
the fluid mass above it, and thereby produce an inequality 
in the upper surface of the water itself; an elevation in the 
eastern, a concavity in the western side of each partition; 
while the waters, from their tendency to seek their level, 
would strive to restore the balance, by falling constantly from 
east to west. 

"Whether this effect would continue for ever, or how long it 
would continue in our oceans as they are at present arranged, 
it is not easy to solve. But that a current from the east to the 
west would be at first produced, is as evident as the light of 



124 THE BRITISH SPY. 

cle, it is obvious that on the western coast, 
(protected, as it would be, from the current, by 
the newly risen earth,) the waters will always be 

heaven ; if it be denied, I demand the solution of the follow- 
ing phenomenon: if a plate be filled with oil or other fluid, 
and the plate be then drawn in any direction, how does it 
happen that the fluid will manifest a tendency to flow in the 
opposite direction ; insomuch that if the draught of the plate 
be sudden, the fluid, running rapidly over the adverse edge 
of the plate, shall discharge itself completely ; leaving little 
behind but the inferior stratum 1 I take it, that the man 
who solves this phenomenon, satisfactorily, will be compelled 
to resort to principles, which, when applied to our oceans, 
resting loosely as they do on the earth which rolls under 
them, would inevitably produce a western current ; and this 
current once produced it will be difficult to say why and when 
it should cease. A current thus produced would be unequal 
from the nature of its cause, at various depths : it would be 
subject to temporary affections and alterations near its sur- 
face, by the winds, the tides and tlie diversified shapes of the 
coasts on which the ocean rolls. The general tendency, 
however, of the great mass of the waters would be to the 
west. 

I see no sound reason in renouncing Mr. Buffbn's theory 
either on account of the eloquent and beautiful manner in 
which it is explained ; nor because it has long had its just 
portion of admirers ; nor because there are other more mo- 
dern tlieories. While we are children, it may be well enough 
to lie passively on our backs and permit others to prepare and 
feed us with the pap of science ; but when our own judgments 
and understandings have gained tlieir maturity, it behoves 
us. instead of being " a feather for every wind that blows," 



THE BRITISH SPY. 125 

comparatively low and calm. The reyult is 
clear. The sands, borne along by the ocean's 
current over the northern and southern extremi- 
ties of this pinnacle, will always have a tendency 
to settle in the calm behind it; and thus, by 

instead of floating impotently before the capricious current 
of fashion and opinion, to heave out all our anchors; to take a 
position from which nothing shall move us but reason and 
truth, not novelty and fashion. In the progress of science, 
many principles, in my opinion, have been dropped to make 
way for others, which are newer but less true. And among 
them Mr. Buffon's theory of the earth. The effect of allu- 
vion is so slow, that any one generation is almost unable to 
perceive the change wrought by it ; hence, many people, 
unable to sit down and reflect on the wonders which time 
can do, fly off with a kind of puerile impatience, and resort 
to any thing, even a bouleversemente of a whole continent, 
rather than to depend on so slow and imperceptible an ope- 
ration as that of alluvion. This is not philosophical. Neither 
on the other hand would it be philosophical to reject a theory 
because it might be new and unsupported by a name. On 
the contrary, the man who, on any branch of philosophy 
starts a new hypothesis, which has even tlie guise of reason, 
confers a benefit on tlie world ; for he enlarges the ground of 
thought, and although not immediately in the temple of truth 
himself, may have dropped a hint, an accidental clew, which 
may serve to lead others to the door of the temple. In this 
spirit, I not only excuse, but am grateful even for the wildest 
of Dr. Darwin's philosophical chimeras. In the same spirit, 
I offer, without the expectation of its final adoption, the idea 
suggested by this note as to the cause of a western current 
11* 



126 THE BRITISH SPY. 

perpetual accumulations, form a western coast, 
more rapidly perhaps than an eastern one ; as 
we may see in miniature, by the capes and 
shallows collected by the still water, on each 
side, at the mouths of creeks, or below rocks, in 
the rapids of a river. 

After this new-born point of earth had gained 
some degree of elevation, it is probable that suc- 
cessive coats of vegetation, according to Ur. 
Darwin's idea, springing up, then falling and 
dying on the earth, paid an annual tribute to 
the infant continent, while each rain which fell 
upon it, bore down a part of its substance and 
assisted perpetually in the enlargement of its 
area. 

It is curious that the arrangement of the 
mountains both in North and South America, 
as well as the shape of the two continents, com- 
bine to strengthen the preceding theory. For 
the mountains, as you will perceive on inspecting 
your maps, run in chains from north to south; 
thus opposing the widest possible barrier to the 
sands, as they roll from east to west. The 
shape of the continent is just that which would 
naturally be expected from such an origin : that 
is, they lie along, collaterally, with the moun- 
tains. As far north as the country is well 



THE BRITISH SPY. 127 

known, these ranges of mountains are observed ; 
and it is remarkable, that as soon as the Cordil- 
leras terminate in the south, the continent of 
South America ends : where they terminate 
in the north, the continent dwindles to a narrow 
isthmus. 

Assuming this theory as correct, it is amusing 
to observe the conclusions to which it will lead us. 

As the country is supposed to have been 
formed by gradual accumulations, and as these 
accumulations were most probably equal or 
nearly so in every part, it follows that, broken 
as this country is in hills and dales, it has as- 
sumed no new appearance by its emersion ; but 
that the figure of the earth's surface is the same 
throughout, as well where it is now covered by 
the waters of the ocean as where it has been 
already denudated. So that Mr. Boyle's moun- 
tains in the sea, cease to have any thing wonderful 
in them. 

Connected with this, it is not an improbable 
conclusion, that new continents and islands are 
now forming on the bed of the ocean. Perhaps, 
at some future day, lands may emerge in the 
neighbourhood of the Antarctic circle, which by 
progressive accumulations and a consequent 
increase of weight, may keep a msfer balance 



128 THE BRITISH SPY. 

between the poles, and produce a material differ- 
ence in our astronomical relations. The navi- 
gators of that day will be as successful in their 
discoveries in the southern seas, as Columbus 
was heretofore in the northern. For there can 
be little doubt that there has been a time when 
Columbus, if he had lived, would have found 
his reasonings, on the balance of the earth, 
fallacious ; and would have sought these seas for 
a continent, as much in vain, as Drake, Anson, 
Cook and others, encouraged perhaps by similar 
reasoning, have since sought the ocean of the 
south. 

If Mr. Buffon's notion be correct, that the 
eastern coast of one continent is perpetually 
feeding on the western coast of that which lies 
before it, the conclusion is inevitable, that the 
present materials of Europe and Africa, and Asia, 
in succession, will at some future day, compose 
the continents of North and South America ; 
while the latter, thrown on the Asiatic shore, 
will again make a part, and, in time, the whole 
of that continent, to which by some philoso- 
phers, they are supposed to have been originally 
attached. It is equally clear that, by this means, 
the continents will not only exchange their ma 
terials, but their position ; so that, in process of 



THE BRITISH SPY. 129 

tinie, they must respectively make a tour around 
the globe, maintaining still the same ceremo- 
nious distance from each other, which they now 
hold. 

According to my theory, which supposes an 
alluvion on the western as well as the eastern 
coast, the continents and islands of the earth, 
will be caused, reciprocally, to approximate, and 
(if materials enough can be found in the bed of 
the ocean, or generated by any process of nature) 
ultimately to unite. Our island of Great Britain, 
therefore, at some future day, and in proper per- 
son, will probably invade the territory of France. 
In the course of this work of alluvion, as it re- 
lates to this country, the refulgent waters of the 
Atlantic will be forced to recede from Hampton 
Roads and the Chesapeake ; the beds whereof 
will become fertile valleys, or, as they are called 
here, river bottoms ; while the lands in the lower 
district of the state, which are now only a very 
few feet above the surface of the sea, will rise 
into majestic eminences, and the present sickly 
site of Norfolk be converted into a high and 
salubrious mountain. I apprehend, however, 
that the present inhabitants of Norfolk would be 
extremely unwilling to have such an effect 
wrought in their day ; since there can be little 



130 THE BRITISH SPY. 

aoubt that they prefer their present commercial 
situation, incumbered as it is by the annual 
visits of the yellow fever, to the elevation and 
health of the Blue Ridge. 

In the course of this process, too, of which I 
have been speaking, if the theory be correct, the 
gulf of Mexico will be eventually filled up, and 
the West India islands consolidated with the 
American continent. 

These consequences, visionary as they may 
now appear, are not only probable, but, if the 
alluvion which is demonstrated to liave taken 
place already, should continue, they are inevita- 
ble. There is very little probability that the 
isthmus of Darien, which connects the two conti- 
nents, is coeval with the Blue Ridge or the Cordil- 
leras ; and it requires only a continuation of the 
cause which produced the isthmus, to effect the 
repletion of the gulf and the consolidation of the 
islands with the continent. 

But when? I am possessed of no data whereby 
the calculations can be made. The depth at 
which Hercidaneum and Pompeia were found 
to be buried in the course of sixteen hundred 
years, affords us no light on this inquiry ; because 
their burial was effected not by the slow alluvion 
and accumulation of time, but by the sudden 



THE BRITISH SPY, 131 

and repeated eruptions of Vesuvius. As little 
are we aided by the repletion of the earth around 
the Tarpein rock in Rome; since that reple- 
tion was most probably effected in a very great 
degree, by the materials of fallen buildings. And 
besides, the original height of the rock is not 
ascertained with any kind of precision ; histo- 
rians having, I believe, merely informed us, that 
it was sufficiently elevated to kill the criminals 
who were thrown from its summit. 

But a truce with philosophy. Who could have 
believed that the skeleton of an unwieldy whale, 
and a few mouldering teeth of a shark, would 
have led me such a dance ! 

Adieu, my dear S , for the present. 

May the hght of heaven continue to shiue around 
you! 



13/J THE BRITISH SPY. 



LETTER III. 

Richmond^ September 15. 

You inquire into the state of your favourite 

art in Virginia. Eloquence, My dear S , 

has few successful votaries here : I mean elo- 
quence of the highest order ; such as that to 
which, not only the bosom of your friend, but 
the feelings of the whole British nation bore evi- 
dence, in listening to the charge of the Begums 
in the prosecution of Warren Hastings. 

In the national and state legislatures, as well 
as at the various bars in the United States, I 
have heard great volubility, much good sense, 
and some random touches of the pathetic ; but 
in the same bodies, I have heard a far greater 
proportion of puerile rant, or tedious and disgust- 
ing inanity. Three remarks are true as to 
almost all their orators. 

First, They have not a sufficient fund of gen- 
eral knowledge. 

Secondly, They have not the habit of close 
and solid thinking:. 



iHE BRITISH SPY. 133 

Thirdly, They do not aspire at oiiginal orna- 
ments. 

From these three defects, it most generally 
results, that although they pour out, easily 
enough, a torrent of words, yet these are destitute 
of the light of erudition, the practical utility of 
just and copious thought, or those novel and 
beautiful allusions and embelhshments, with 
which the very scenery of the country is so 
highly calculated to inspire them. 

The truth is, my dear S . . . , that this scarci- 
ty of genuine and sublime eloquence, is not 
confined to the United States : instances of it in 
any civilized country have always been rare 
indeed. Mr. Blair is certainly correct in the 
opinion, that a state of nature is most favourable 
to the higher efforts of the imagination, and the 
more unrestrained and noble raptures of the 
heart. Civilization, wherever it has gained 
ground, has interwoven with society a habit of 
artificial and elaborate decorum, which mixes in 
every operation of life, deters the fancy from every 
bold enterprise, and buries nature under a load of 
hypocritical ceremonies. A man, therefore, in 
order to be eloquent, has to forget the habits in 
which he has been educated ; and never will he 

touch his audience so exquisitely as when he 
12 



134 THK BRITISH SPY. 

goes back to the primitive simplicity of the patri- 
archal age. 

I have said that instances of genuine and 
sublime eloquence have always been rare in 
every civilized country. It is true that Tully 
and Pliny the younger have, in their epistles, 
represented Rome, in their respective days, as 
swarming with orators of the first class; yet 
from the specimens which they themselves have 
left us, I am led to entertain a very humble opin- 
ion of ancient eloquence. 

Demosthenes we know has pronounced, not 
the chief, but the sole merit of an orator to con- 
sist in delivery^ or as Lord Yerulam translates 
it, in action^ and, although I know that the 
world would proscribe it as a literary heresy, I 
cannot help believing Tully's merit to have been 
principally of that kind. For my own part, I 
confess very frankly, that 1 have never met with 
any thing of his, which has, according to my 
taste, deserved the name of superior eloquence. 
His style, indeed, is pure, polished, sparkling, 
full and sonorous ; and perhaps deserves all the 
encomiums which have been bestowed on it. 
But an oration, certainly, no more deserves the 
title of superior eloquence, because its style is 
ornamented, than the figure of an Apollo would 



THE BRITISH SPY. 135 

deserve the epithet of elegant, merely from the 
superior texture and flovr of the drapery. In 
reading an oration, it is the mind to which I 
look. It is the expanse and richness of the con- 
ception itself, which I regard, and not the glit- 
tering tinsel wherein it may be attired. TuUy'a 
orations, examined in this spirit, have, with me, 
sunk far below the grade at which we have 
been taught to fix them. 

It is true, that at school, I learned, like the 
rest of the world, to lisp, " Cicero the orator f 
but w^hen I grew up and began to judge for 
myself, I opened his volumes again and looked 
in vain for that sublimity of conception, which 
fills and astonishes the mind ; that simple pathos 
which finds such a sweet welcome in every 
breast ; or that resistless enthusiasm of unaffected 
passion, which takes the heart by storm. On 
the contrary, let me confess to you that, what 
ever may be the cause, to me he seemed cold 
and vapiiJ, and uninteresting and tiresome : not 
only destitute of that compulsive energy of thought 
which we look for in a great man, but even void 
of the strong, rich and varied colouring of a supe- 
rior fancy. His masterpiece of composition, his 
work, De Oratore, is, in my judgment, extremely 
light and unsubstantial; and in truth is little 



136 THK BRITISH SPS". 

more than a tissue of rhapsodies, assailing the 
ear indeed with pleasant sounds, but leaving few 
clear and useful traces on the mind. Plutarch 
speaks of his person as all grace, his voice as 
perfect music, his look and gesture as all aUve, 
striking, dignified and peculiarly impressive; 
and I incline to the opinion, that to these theat- 
rical advantages, connected with the just reliance 
which the Romans had in his patriotism and 
good judgment, their strong interest in the sub- 
jects discussed by him, and their more intimate 
acquaintance with the idiom of his language, his 
fame while living, arose ; and that it has been 
since propagated by the schools on account of the 
classic purity and elegance of his style. 

Many of these remarks are, in my opinion, 
equally applicable to Demosthenes. He deserves, 
indeed, the distinction of having more fire and 
less smoke than TuUy. But in the majestic 
march of the mind, in the force of thought, and 
splendour of imagery, 1 think, both the orators 
of Greece and Rome eclipsed by more than one 
person within his majesty's dominions. 

Heavens ! how should I be anathematized 
and excommunicated b}^ every pedagogue in 
Great Britain, if these remarks were made public ! 
Spirits of Car and of Ascham ! have mercy upon 



XHE BRITISH SPY. 137 

me ! Wo betide the hand that plucks the wizard 

beard of hoary error ! From Usping infancy to 

stooping age, the reproaches, the curses of the 

world shall be upon it ! But to you, my dearest 

S ; my friend, my preceptor, to you I 

disclose my opinions with the same freedom, and 

for the same purpose, that I w^ould expose my 

wounds to a surgeon. To you, it is pecuharly 

proper that I should make my appeal on this 

subject ; for when eloquence is the theme, your 

name is not far off. 

Tell me then, you, w^ho are capable of doing 

it, w^hat is this divine eloquence. What the 

charm by which the orator binds the senses of 

his audience ; by which he attunes and touches 

and sweeps the human lyre, w4th the resistless 

sway and master hand of a Timotheus ? Is not 

the whole mystery comprehended in one word, 

SYMPATHY V I mean not merely that tender 

passion which quavers the lip and fills the eye 

of the babe W'hen he looks on the sorrows and 

tears of another ; but that still more delicate and 

subtile quality by which we passively catch the 

very colours, momentum and strength of the 

mind, to whose operations we are attending; 

which converts every speaker, to whom we listen, 

into a Procj'ustes, and enables him, for the mo- 
12* 



138 THE BRITISH SPY. 

ment, to stretch or lop our faculties to fit the 
standard of his own mind. 

This is a very curious subject. I am some- 
times half inclined to adopt the notion stated by 
our great Bacon in his original and masterly 
treatise on the advancement of learning " Fas- 
cination," says hcj "is the power and act of 
imagination intensive upon other bodies than 
the body of the imaginant; wherein the school 
of Paracelsus and the disciples of pretended na- 
tural magic have been so intemperate, as that 
they have exalted the power of the imagination 
to be much one with the powder of miracle-w^ork- 
ing faith : others that draw nearer to probability ,- 
calling to their view the secret passages of things, 
and especially of the contagion that passeth from 
body to body, do conceive it should likewise be 
agreeable to nature, that there should he some 
transmissions and operations from spirit to 
spirit, without the mediation of the senses ; 
whence the conceits have grown, now almost 
in.ade civil, of the mastering spirit, and the force 
of confidence, and the like." This notion is 
further explained in his Sylva Sylvarum, where- 
in he tells a story of an Egyptian soothsayer, 
who made Mark Anthony beheve that his 
genius, which was otherwise brave and confi- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 139 

den(, was, in the presence of Octavianus Caesar- 
poor and cowardly : and therefore he advised 
him to absent himself as much as he could, and 
remove far from him. It turned out, however, 
that this soothsayer was suborned by Cleopatra, 
who wished Anthony's company in Egypt. 

Yet, if there be not something of this secret 
intercourse from spirit to spirit, how does it hap- 
pen that one speaker shall gradually invade and 
benumb all the faculties of my soul as if I were 
handling a torpedo ; while another shall awaken 
and arouse me, like the clangour of the martial 
trumpet ? How does it happen that the first shall 
infuse his poor spirit into my system, lethargize 
my native intellects and bring down my powers 
exactly to the level of his own ? or that the last 
shall descend upon me like an angel of light, 
breathe new energies into my frame, dilate my 
soul with his own intelligence, exalt me into a 
new and nobler region of thought, snatch me 
from the earth at pleasure, and rap me to the 
seventh heaven ? And, what is still more won- 
derful, how does it happen that these different 
effects endure so long after the agency of the 
speaker has ceased? Insomuch, that if I sit 
down to any intellectual exercise, after listening 
to the first speaker, my performance shall be 



140 THE BRITISH SPY. 

unworthy even of me, and the num-fish visible 
and tangible in every sentence ; whereas, if I 
enter on the same amusement, after having 
attended to the last mentioned orator, I shall be 
astonished at the elevation and vigour of nij'' 
own thoughts ; and if I meet, accidentally, with 
the same production, a month or two afterward, 
when my mind has lost the inspiration, shall 
scarcely recognise it for my own w^ork. 

Whence is all this ? To me it would seem 
that it must proceed either from the subtile com- 
merce between the spirits of men, which Lord 
Yerulam notices, and which enables the speaker 
thereby to identify his hearer with himself; or 
else that the mind of man possesses, independ- 
ently of any volition on the part of its proprie- 
tor, a species of pupillary faculty of dilating and 
contracting itself, in proportion to the pencil of 
the rays of light which the speaker throws upon 
it ; which dilatation or contraction, as in the case 
of the eye, cannot be immediately and abruptly 
alee red. 

Whatever may be the solution, the fact, I 
think, is certainly as I have stated it. And it is 
remarkable that the same effect is produced, 
though perhaps in a less degree, by perusing 
books into which different degrees of spirit and 



THE BRITISH SPY. 14 k 

genius have been infused. I am acquainted 
with a gentlemen who never sits down to a com- 
position, wherein he wishes to shine, without 
previously reading, with intense f^ppUcation, half 
a dozen pages of his favourite Bolingbroke. 
Having taken the character and impulse- of that 
writer's mind, he declares that he feels his pen to 
flow with a spirit not his own ; and that, if, in 
the course of his w^ork, his powers begin to lan- 
guish, he finds it easy to revive and charge them 
afresh from the same never-faiUng source. 

If these thmgs be not visionary, it becomes 
important to a man, for a new reason, what 
books he reads, and what company he keeps, 
since, according to Lord Verulam's notion, an 
influx of the spirits of others may change the 
native character of his heart and understanding, 
before he is aware of it ; or, according to the 
other suggestion, he may so habitually contract 
the pupil of his mind, as to be disqualified for the 
comprehension of a great subject, and fit only 
for microscopic observations. Whereas by keep- 
ing the company and reading the works of men 
of magnanimity and genius only, he may re- 
ceive their qualities by subtile transmission, and 
eventually, get the eye, the ardour and the enter- 
prise of an eagle. 



142 THE BRITISH SPY. 

But whither am I wandering? Permit me 
to return. Admitting the correctness of the 
principles formerly mentioned, it would seem to 
be a fair conclusion that whenever an orator 
wishes to know what effect he has wrought on 
his audience, he should coolly and conscientiously 
propound to himself this question : Have I, 
myself, throughout my oration, felt those clear 
and cogent convictions of judgment, and that 
pure and exalted fire of the soul, with which I 
wished to inspire others ? For, i^.e may rely on 
it, that he can no more impart (or to use Bacon's 
word, transmit) convictions and sensations which 
he himself has not, at the time, sincerely felt, 
than he can convey a clear title to property, in 
which he himself has no title. 

This leads me to remark a defect which 1 
have noticed more than once in this country. 
Following up too closely the cold conceit of the 
Roman division of an oration, the speakers set 
aside a particular part of their discourse, usually 
the peroration, in which, they take it into their 
heads that they will be pathetic. Accordingly 
when they reach this part, whether it be prompt- 
ed by the feeUngs or not, a mighty bustle com- 
mences, l^he speaker pricks up his ears, erects 
his chest, tosses hi? arms with hysterical vehe- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 143 

mence, and says every thing which he supposes 
ought to affect his hearers ; but it is all in vain ; 
for it is obvious that every thing he says is - 
prompted by the head ; and, however it may 
disfflay his ingenuity and fertility, however it 
may appeal to the admiration of his hearers, it 
will never strike deeper. The hearts of the 
audience wall refuse all commerce except with 
the heart of the speaker ; nor, in this commerce 
is it possible, by any disguise, however artful, to 
impose false w^are on them. However the speaker 
may labour to seem to feel, however near he may 
approach to the appearance of the reality, the 
heart nevertheless possesses a keen unerring 
sense, which never fails to detect the imposture. 
It would seem as if the heart of man stamps a 
secret mark on all its effusions, w^hich alone can 
give them currency, and which no ingenuity, 
however adroit, can successfully counterfeit. 

I have been not a little diverted, here, in lis- 
tening to some fine orators, who deal almost 
entirely in this pathos of the head. They prac- 
tise the start, the pause — make an immense 
parade of attitudes and gestures, and seem to 
imagine themselves piercing the heart with a 
thousand w^ounds. The heart all the time, 
developing every trick that is played to cajole 



144 THE BRITISH SPY. 

^er, and sitting serene and composed, looks on 
and smiles at the ridiculous pageant as it passes. 

Nothing can, in my opinion, be more ill- 
judged in an orator, than to indulge himself in 
this idle, artificial parade. It is particularly un- 
fortunate in an exordium. It is as much as to 
say caveat auditor; and for my own part, the 
moment I see an orator rise with this menacing 
majesty ; assume a look of solemn wisdom ; 
stretch forth his right arm, like the ruberis dex- 
ter of Jove ; and hear him open his throat in 
deep and tragic tone ; I feel myself involuntarily 
braced, and in an attitude of defence, as if I were 
going to take a bout with Ivlendoza. 

The Virginians boast of an orator of nature, 
whose manner was the reverse of all this ; and 
he is the only orator of whom they do boast, 
with much emphasis. I mean the celebrated 
Patrick Henry, whom I regret that I came to this 
country too late to see. I cannot, indeed, easily 
forgive him, even in the grave, his personal 
instrumentality in separating these fair colonies 
from Great Britain. Yet I dare not withhold 
fVom the memory of his talents, the tribute of 
respect to which they are so justly entitled. 

I am told that his general appearance and 
manners were those of a plain farmer or planter 



THE BRITISH SPY. 145 

of the back country ; that, in this character, he 
always entered on the exordium of an ora- 
tion ; disqualifying himself, with looks and 
expressions of humility so lowly and unassum- 
ing, as threw every heart off its guard and 
induced his audience to listen to him, with the 
same easy openness with which they would con- 
verse with an honest neighbour : but, by and by, 
when it was little expected, he would take a 
flight so high, and blaze with a splendour so 
heavenly, as filled them with a kind of religious 
awe, and gave him the force and authority of a 
prophet. 

You remember this w^as the manner of Ulys- 
ses ; commencing wdtli the look depressed and 
hesitating voice. Yet I dare say Mr. Henry was 
directed to it, not by the example of Ulysses, of 
which it is very probable, that, at the commence- 
ment of his career, at least, he was entirely igno- 
rant : but either that it was the genuine, 
trembling diffidence, without which, if TuUy 
may be believed, a great orator never rises ; or 
else that he was prompted to it by his own sound 
judgment and his intimate knowledge of the 
human heart. 

I have seen the skeletons of some of his ora- 
tions. The periods and their members are short, 
13 



14b THE BRITISH SPY. 

quick, eager, palpitating, and are manifestly the 
extemporaneous efTusions of a mind deeply con- 
vinced, and a heart inflamed with zeal for the 
propagation of those convictions. They aflford, 
however, a very inadequate sample of his talents: 
the stenographer having never attempted to fol- 
low him, when he arose in the strength and 
awful majesty of his genius. 

I am not a little surprised to find eloquence of 
this high order so negligently cultivated in the 
United States. Considering what a very power- 
ful engine it is in a republic, and how peculiarly 
favourable to its culture the climate of republics 
has been always found, I expected to have seen 
in America more votaries to Mercury than even 
to Plutus. Indeed it would be so sure a road both 
to wealth and honours, that if I coveted either, 
and were an American, I would bend all my 
powers to its acqunement, and try whether I 
could not succeed as well as Demosthenes in 
vanquishing natural imperfections. Ah ! my 
dear S . . . . , were you a citizen of this country ! 
You, under the influence of whose voice a parlia- 
ment of Great Britain has trembled and shud 
dered, while her refined and enlightened galleries 
have wept and fainted in the excess of feeling ! 
what might you not accomplish ? But, for the 



THE BRITISH SPY 147 

honour of my country, I am much better pleased 
that you are a Briton. 

On the subject of Yirginian eloquence, you 
shall hear further from me. In the mean time 
adieu, my S .... , my friend, my father. 



148 THE BRITISH 8PV 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE VIRGINIA ARGUS. 

/Sir, 

As the theory of the earth derives importance 
from its dignity, if not from its utihty, and has 
of late years given birth to many ingenious specu- 
lations, I shall offer no apology for troubling you 
with the following remarks, which were sug- 
gested by an essay, in last Wednesday's Argus, 
entitled "The British Spy." 

Sea shells and other marine productions, dif- 
fering in no respect from those which now exist 
in their native element, have been found in every 
explored part of the globe. They are found, too, 
in the highest as well as in the lowest situations : 
on the loftiest mountains of Europe, and the still 
loftier Andes of South America. To go no 
farther from home, our own Alleghany abounds 
with them. How were these substances sepa- 
rated from their parent ocean? Do they still 
remain in their primitive beds? and has the 
water deserted them ? or have they deserted the 
water? These questions, dilferently answered, 
give rise to different theories. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 149 

Among these theories, that of the Count de 
Buffon stand conspicuous. Adorned with all 
the graces of style, and borrowing a lustre from 
his other splendid productions, it has long had 
its full share of admirers. After exhibiting new 
proofs of a former submersion, in which he dis- 
covers great ingenuity, and is certainly entitled 
to great praise, he proceeds to account for the 
earth in its present form, by a natural operation 
of the ocean which covered it. This hypothesis, 
which the British Spy has partially adopted, is 
liable to many objections, which, to me at least, 
are insuperable. I will briefly notice some of the 
most obvious. 

Although alluvion may account for small 
accessions of soil nearly on a level with the 
ocean, it cannot explain the formation of moun- 
tains. It is contrary to all the known laws of 
nature to suppose that a fluid could lift, so far 
above its own level, bodies many times heavier 
than itself 

Again, if the ocean, as Buffon maintains, have 
a tendency to wear away all points and emi- 
nences over which it passes, it would exert this 
tendency on the mountains itself had formed ; or 
rather, it would prevent their formation. It is 

surely inconsistent *o suppose the ocean would 
i3* 



150 THE BRITISH SPY. 

produce mountains, and at the same time wear 
away those that aheady existed. Indeed, the 
author himself seemed to be aware of the invinci- 
ble objections to this part of his theory, and en- 
deavours to evade their force by sinking a part 
of the earth, in the cavity occasioned by which, 
the superfluous waters find a sufficient receptacle; 
thus abandoning the agency of alluvion, and 
adopting a new and totally different hypothesis. 
But while marine substances are found far 
above their proper element, vegetable bodies are 
often found far below the seat of their production. 
In Europe they often meet with wood, at great 
depths of the earth, in a state of perfect pre- 
servation ; and in sinking wells, in this country, 
trunks of trees frequently obstruct the progress 
of the work. A Mr. Peters, of Harrison county, 
not long since, met with pieces of pine, twenty 
feet below the surface, on a hill of considerable 
elevation, and at a distance from any water- 
course. In this town, leaves, believed to be those 
of the hazle, were found mingled with marine 
productions. These vegetable matters must 
have been once exposed to air, heat and hght, 
to have attained the state in which they were 
found ; and the same exposure would have 
afterwards caused their decay, unless their inter- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 151 

ment had been sudden and complete. Bones, 
shells and other extraneous substances, aie often 
found bedded m marble and other hard bodies ; 
and I myself have seen a specimen of tiiose 
human bones, which in the fortifications of Gi- 
braltar are often found incorporated with the solid 
rock. What less than some great throe of 
nature, or some mighty agent, now dormant and 
unknown, could have produced the general Iwu- 
leversement which these appearances indicate ? 

But the hypothetical reasoning of Monsieur de 
Buffon is founded on a fact no less hypothetical. 
The arguments in favour of a general current 
to the west, are, I confess, very cogent, and 
would be convincing but for the follo^\'ing 
difficulties : 

1. If the operation of the sun and moon, in 
producing alternate elevations and depressions 
of the occcm, produce also a current, the force of 
this current will be in proportion to the mass of 
water thus raised and depressed. Now, contrary 
to the assertion of Buffon, the tides are higher?t in 
high latitudes, and gradually diminish towards 
the equator, where I believe they hardly exceed 
a foot. B}^ the observations of Captain Cook, 
the same difference exists in the Pacific ocean 
as was long known in the Atlantic, If then 



X52 THE BHITISH 3PY. 

there be a general current to the west, it should 
be strongest in high latitudes and weakest under 
the line. But the contrary is the fact. No 
general current to the west is found without the 
tropics ; and that which prevails irregularly 
between them is usually and rationally ascribed 
to the trade winds. 

2. If this supposed current existed, its effect 
would be readily perceived by our navigators in 
the difference of their passages to and from Eu- 
rope ; but, the one before referred to excepted, 
they meet with nothing of the kind. A current, 
at the rate of one mile an hour, would make a 
difference of near two thousand miles between 
an ordinary voyage to and from Europe. 

3. By actual observations, detailed in the 
second volume of the Philosophical Transactions, 
the prevailing currents about some islands in the 
Atlantic ocean are to the east. At Owhyhee, 
which lies within the tropics, and nearly in the 
middle of the Pacific ocean, Captain Cook ob- 
served the current to set, without any regularity, 
sometimes to the west and sometimes to the east. 

4. But one argument may be deemed conclu- 
sive. The air is a fluid at least as sensible to 
the gravitating power of the planet as the ocean, 
and like that, must also have its tides. If, on 



THE BRITISH SPY. 153 

the one hand, the tides of the air are more liable 
to be disturbed by its compressibility, by partial 
rarefaction or condensation, its obstacles, on the 
other hand, to a free motion round the earth, 
are comparatively inconsiderable. Its course is 
somewhat impeded, but never arrested. If then 
such a general law existed, as is contended for, 
there would be, either a steady east wind, or 
greater flow of air from that quarter than from 
the west, in every chmate of the globe. But 
this is the case only between the tropics ; and 
the prevalence of the east wind, in that region, 
has been almost universally ascribed to rarefac- 
tion by heat, since no other solution can account 
for the sea and land breezes, monsoons, and 
other phenomena of those climates. 

From these considerations I am disposed to 
think, that there is no uniform current to the 
west ; or that it is too inconsiderable to have any 
effect on the figure of the earth. Admitting the 
existence of a general current, it may be merely 
superficial. . Currents, whose force gradually 
diminishes from the surface downwards, are 
known to exist; and the practice of seamen, 
when they wish "to try the current," is evidently 
founded on the belief that they do not extend to 
great depths. The accession of water by the 



164 THE BRITISH SPY. 

tides is too small to require a general movement 
of tlie ocean to its bottom. 

In weighing the probability of a general cur- 
rent to the west, I have confined myself to the 
operation of the tides ; as the mere motion of 
the earth, either in its orbit, or on its axis, can 
have no possible effect this way. This motion 
is communicated to every part of the earth, 
whether solid or fluid ; and while it continues 
equable, they are both affected alike, and their 
relative situations remain the same. So well 
established a principle must have been contested 
by the British Spy through mere inadvertence. 

If, after all that has been said, arguments, in 
favour of a current from the surface to the bot- 
tom, be deemed conclusive, it is worth while to 
inquire into its probable effects. 

The British Spy supposes that this genered 
current enlarges both the eastern and western 
coasts of continents; in which hypothesis, he 
differs less from Buffon than that elegant but 
fanciful theorist differs from himself. For, in his 
heory on the formation of the planets, he ad- 
^ancesthat the ocean is continually wearing away 
/he eastern coasts, and by a process, which he 
does not even hint at, enlarging the western ; 
and that Asia is an older countrv than Europe. 



THE BRITISH SPV. 155 

But in a subsequent work, his Epochs, he main- 
tains the direct reverse, and mentions the abrupt- 
ness of the western, and the greater number of 
islands of the eastern coasts, as evidences that 
the former have been abraded by the ocean. 

But I find neither reasoning nor fact to war- 
rant either of tiiese conclusions. It has been 
observed that a shore forms a convex outline 
where it gains on the ocean, and a concave 
where it loses. On inspecting the map of the 
world, we perceive nothing which by this stand- 
ard indicates a greater increase on one continent 
than on the other, or even any increase at all. 
We see no vast prominence of coast under the 
line ; but on taking both shores of the ocean, in 
both hemispheres^ into comparison, we find that 
the convexities on the western side are balanced 
by equal convexities on the eastern. Besides it 
is clear that in proportion as the contents of the 
ocean are cast on the land, in the same degree 
it becomes deeper, and its shores more steep and 
abrupt. This is as true of the ocean as it is of 
a ditch. By this increasing declivity of grow- 
ing shores, the additional gravity to be overcome 
will, in time, check the alluvion of any current, 
however strong. An opposite equalizing tend- 
encv occurs, where the coast Is worn away by 



156 THE BRITISH SPY. 

the oceau. Successive fragments of rocks and 
precipices, by sloping the shore, gradually abate 
the impetus of the waters, until the coast attains 
that due incUnation by which the gravity to be 
overcome exactly counterbalances the projectile 
force of the ocean. Without doubt, small varia- 
tions continually take place in the outhne of all 
coasts ; but the equilibrium for which I contend, 
is founded on correct principles ; and every coast, 
whether eastern or western, approaches to that 
form, if it have not already attained it, when 
what it loses hy the ocean will be precisely 
equal to what it gains. 

It should be remarked that Buffon, in his last 
addition to his Theorie, conscious of the insuffi- 
ciency of alluvion in the formation of continents, 
supposes that the cavities, with which the earth 
abounds, are continually falling in, and from the 
consequent retreat of the ocean, that continents 
are continually approximating. This conjecture 
certainly renders his theory more consistent ; but 
it substitutes a cause for the immersion of the 
earth totally different from his first hypothesis of 
alluvion : and it has been that alone which I 
have considered. This last supposition is merely 
gratuitous; as neither observation nor history 
•^fTord us any proofs of the existence of these 



. ^xE BRITISH SPY. 157 

immense caverns, or of any general retreat of 
the ocean. 

For the reasons which I have given, and for 
many more, the theory of this celebrated natur- 
alist has long been deemed both improbable and 
inadequate, and is now confined to the merit, 
(no small merit by the by,) of having collected 
valuable materials, and detected the fallacies of 
Burnet, Woodward and other dreamers on the 
subject. It has accordingly given place to new 
theories, more consistent at least, if not more 
satisfactory. 

Volcanoes, and intense heat in the centre of 
the earth, the recrements of animals and vegeta- 
bles, have been employed, as separate or joint 
agents, by the speculators on this curious sub- 
ject. Dr. Hutton, by far the most celebrated of 
these, supposes the exuviee of shell fish to have 
constituted the basis of the earth ; and that it 
has assumed its present form and appearance 
by the fusion produced by the earth's internal 
heat. He supports this opinion by a train of 
elaborate reasoning, and a chemical examination 
of the bodies which compose the outer crust of 
the earth. I regret that I am acquainted with 
the work only at second hand. But I believe 



14 



15S THE BRITISH SPY. 

that even this theory, ingenious and scientific 
as it is, gives little more general satisfaction 
than those which preceded it. It is, in com- 
mon with the other late hypothesis, opposed 
by the fine reasoning of Buffon, in favour of the 
immediate action of water in producing the cor- 
respondent angles of mountains, their waving 
outline, parallel strata, &c., as well as by many 
of the facts I have glanced at ; and it is, more- 
over, said to be contradicted by some chemical 
experiments, at once pertinent and clear. 

On the whole, then, I fear we have not yet 
arrived at that certainty which will satisfy the 
inquirer who is neither enamoured with the fan- 
cies of his own brain, nor seduced by the elo- 
quence of others ; and therefore, to use the 
words of an elegant writer of our own country, 
who discovers the same acuteness, the same phi- 
losophic caution on this as on other occasions, 
" we must be contented to acknowledge that this 
great phenomenon is, yet, unsolved. Ignorance 
is preferable to error ; and he is less remote from 
the truth who believes nothing, than he who 
believes what is wrong." 

Before we can obtain a sober conviction on the 
subject, or even properly compare the proba- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 159 

bility of the respective theories, many questions 
now contested must be settled ; new facts 
must be discovered ; new powers of nature 
developed. 

How far does the power of aqueous solution 
and of crystallization extend ? Does the earth 
borrow all its heat from the sun ? or has it a pe- 
rennial source in its own bowels? are there 
general currents in the ocean ? if so, what are 
their couises, periods and strength ? It is cleat 
that every rain that falls, every wind that blows, 
transports some portion of the earth we inhabit 
to the ocean. Is there any secret and magical 
process in nature, as some have supposed, by 
which this perpetual waste is perpetually re- 
paired ? and do mountains receive accessions by 
rain, by attraction, or any other mode equal to 
what they evidently lose ? Again, water is con- 
verted into vegetables, vegetables into animals, 
and both of these again into earth. Is this same 
earth reconverted into water, and by one unva- 
ried round of mutation, each preserved in its 
present proportion to all eternity ? 

Science, with an ardour of inquiry never be- 
fore known, and a daily increase of materials, 
advances with hasty steps to answer these pre- 



160 THE BRITISH SPY. 

liminary questions ; but till they are solved 1 
incline to think that every theory is premature 
and shall, therefore, remain satisfied with the 
safe, but humble character of 

AN INQUIRER. 



I 



THE BRITISH SPY. 161 



LETTER IV. 

Richmond, September 22. 

1 HAVE just returned, my dear S , 

from an interesting morning's ride. My object 
was to visit the site of the Indian town, Pow- 
hatan ; which you will remember was the 
metropohs of the dominions of Pocahuntas's 
father, and, very probably, the birth-place of 
that celebrated princess. 

The town was built on the river, about two 
miles below the ground now occupied by Rich- 
mond ; that is, about two miles below the head 
of tide water. The land whereon it stood is, at 
present, part of a beautiful and valuable farm 
belonging to a gentleman by the name of Wil- 
liam Mayo. 

Aware of the shght manner in which the 
Indians have always constructed their habita- 
tions, I was not at all disappointed in finding 
no vestige of the old town. But as I traversed 
the ground over which Pocahuntas had so often 

bounded and frolicked in the sprightly morning 
14* 



162 THE BRITISH SPY. 

of her youth, I could not help recalling the 
principal features of her history, and heaving a 
sigh of mingled pity and veneration to her 
memory. 

Good Heaven! What an eventful life was 
hers ! To speak of nothing else, the arrival of 
the English in her father's dominions must 
have appeared (as indeed it turned out to be) a 
most portentous phenomenon. It is not easy 
for us to conceive the ^.mazement and consterna- 
tion which must have filled her mind and that 
of her nation at the first appearance of our 
countrymen. Their great ship, with all her 
sails spread, advancing in solemn majesty to the 
shore ; their complexion ; their dress ; their lan- 
guage ; their domestic animals ; their cargo of 
new and glittering wealth ; and then the thun 
der and irresistible force of their artillery ; the 
distant country announced b}^ them, far beyond 
the great water, of which the oldest Indian had 
never heard, or thought, or dreamed — all this 
was so new, so wonderful, so tremendous, that I 
do seriously suppose, the persona] descent of an 
army of Milton's celestial angels, robed in light, 
sporting in the bright beams of the sun and 
redoubling their splendour, making divine har- 
mony with their golden harps, or playing with 



THE BRITISH SPY. 163 

the bolt and chasing the rapid hghtning- of 
heaven, would excite not more astonishment in 
Great Britain than did the de])arkation of the 
EngHsh among the aborigines of Virginia. 

Poor Indians ! Where are they now ? Indeed, 
my dear S , this is a truly afflicting con- 
sideration. The people here may say what 
they please ; but, on the principles of eternal 
truth and justice, they have no right to this 
country. They say that they have bought it — 
bought it! Yes; — of whom? Of the poor 
trembling natives who knew that refusal would 
be vain ;. and who strove to make a merit of ne- 
cessity by seeming to yield with grace, what 
tliey knew that they had not the power to retain. 
Such a bargain might appease the conscience of 
a gentleman of the green bag, "worn and 
hackneyed" in the arts and frauds of his profes- 
sion ; but in heaven's chancery, my S , there 

can be little doubt that it has been long since 
set aside on the ground of duress. 

Poor wretches ! No wonder that they are so 
implacably vindictive against the white people ; 
no wonder that the rage of resentment is handed 
down fiom generation to generation ; no wonder- 
that they refuse to associate and mix perma- 
nently with their unjust and cruel invaders and 



164 THE BRITISH SPY. 

externjinators ; no wonder that in the unabating 
spite and frenzy of conscious impotence, they 
wage an eternal war, as well as they are able ; 
that they triumph in the rare opportunity of 
revenge ; that they dance, sing and rejoice, a^ 
the victim shrieks and faints amid the flames, 
when they imagine all the crimes of their 
oppressors collected on his head, and fancy the 
spirits of their injured forefathers hovering over 
the scene, smiling with ferocious delight at the 
grateful spectacle, and feasting on the precious 
odour as it arises from the burning blood of the 
white man. 

Yet the people, here, affect to wonder that the 
Indians are so very unsusceptible of civilization ; 
or, in other words, that they so obstinately refuse 
to adopt the manners of the white men. Go, 
Yirginians ; erase, from the Indian nation, the 
tradition of their wrongs ; niake them forget, if 
you can, that once this charming country w£is 
theirs ; that over these fields and through these 
forests their beloved forefathers, once, in careless 
gaiety, pursued their sports and hunted their 
game ; that every returning day found them 
the sole, the peaceful, the happy proprietors of 
this extensive and beautiful domain. Make 
them forget, too, if you can, that in the raidat 



I 



THE BRITISH SPY. 165 

of all this innocence, simplicity and bliss — the 
white man came ; and lo ! — the animated chase, 
the feast, the dance, the song of fearless, thought- 
less joy were over ; that ever since, they have 
been made to drink of the bitter cup of humilia- 
tion ; treated like dogs ; their lives, their liberties, 
the sport of the white men ; their country and 
the graves of their fathers torn from them, in 
cruel succession : until, driven from river to river, 
from forest to forest, and through a period of two 
hundred years, rolled back, nation upon nation, 
they find themselves fugitives, vagrants and stran- 
gers in their own country, and look forward to 
the certain period when their descendants will 
be totally extinguished by wars, driven at the 
point of the bayonet into the western ocean, or 
reduced to a fate still more deplorable and horrid, 
the condition of slaves. Go, administer the cup 
of oblivion to recollections and anticipations 
hke these, and then you will cease to complain 
that the Indian refuses to be civilized. But 
until then, surely it is nothing wonderful that a 
nation even yet bleeding afresh, from the me- 
mory of ancient wrongs, pei"petually agonized 
by new outrages, and goaded into desperation 
and madness at the prospect of the certain ruin 
which awaits their descendants, should hate the 



166 THE BRITISH SPY. 

authors of their miseries, of their desolation, their 
destruction ; should hate their manners, hate 
their colour, their language, their name, and 
every thing that belongs to them. No : never, 
until time shall wear out the history of their sor- 
rows and their sufferings, will the Indian be 
brought to love the white man, and to imitate 
his manners. 

Great God ! To reflect, my S , that 

the authors of all these wrongs were our own 
countrymen, our forefathers, professors of the 
meek and benevolent religion of Jesus ! Oh ! it 
was impious ; it was unmanly ; poor and pitiful ! 
Gracious heaven ! what had these poor people 
done? The simple inhabitants of these peaceful 
plains, what wrong, what injury had they offered 
to the English 7 My soul melts with pity and 
shame. 

As for the present inhabitants, it must be 
granted that they are comparatively innocent ; 
unless indeed they also have encroached under 
the guise of treaties, which they themselves have 
previously contrived to render expedient or ne- 
cessary to the Indians. 

"Whether this has been the case or not, I am 
foo much a stranger to the interior transactions 
tif this country to decide. But it seems to me 



THE BRITISH SPY. 167 

thai were I a president of the United States, 1 
would glory in going to the Indians, throwing 
myself on my knees before them, and saying to 
them, " Indians, friends, brothers, O ! forgive my 
countrymen ! Deeply have our forefathers 
wronged you ; and they have forced us to con- 
tinue the wrong. Reflect, brothers ; it was not 
our fault that we were born in your country ; 
but now we have no other home ; we have no 
where else to rest our feet. Will you not, then, 
permit us to remain ? Can you not forgive even 
us, innocent as we are ? If you can, O ! come 
to our bosoms ; be, indeed, our brothers ; and 
since there is room enough for us all, give us a 
home in your land, and let us be children of the 
same affectionate family." I believe that a mag- 
nanimity of sentiment Hke this, followed up by 
a correspondent greatness of conduct on the part 
of the people of the United States, would go fur- 
ther to bury the tomahawk and produce a frater- 
nization with the Indians, than all the presents, 
treaties and missionaries that can be employed; 
dashed and defeated as these latter means always 
are, by a claim of rights on the part of the white 
people which the Indians know to be false and 
baseless. Let me not be told that the Indians 
are too dark and fierce to be affected by generous 



168 THE BRITISH SPY. 

and noble sentiments. I will not believe it. 
Magnanimity can never be lost on a nation 
which has produced an Alknomok, a Logan, 
and a Pocahuntas. 

The repetition of the name of this amiable 
princess brings me back to the point from 
which I digressed. I wonder that the Virginians, 
fond as they are of anniversaries, have instituted 
no festival or order in honour of her memory. 
For my own part, I have little doubt, from the 
histories which we have of the first attempts at 
colonizing their country, that Pocahuntas de- 
serves to be considered as the patron deity of the 
enterprise. When it is remembered how long 
the colony struggled to get a footing ; how often 
sickness or famine, neglect at home, misman- 
agement here, and the hostilities of the natives, 
brought it to the brink of ruin ; through what a 
tedious lapse of time, it alternately languished 
and revived, sunk and rose, sometimes hanging- 
like Addison's lamp, " quivering at a point," then 
suddenly shooting up into a sickly and short- 
lived flame ; in one word, when we recollect how 
near and how often it verged towards total ex- 
tinction, maugre the patronage of Pocahuntas ; 
there is the strongest reason to believe that, but 
for her patronage, the anniversary cannon of the 



THE BRITISH SPY. 169 

Fourth of July would never have resounded 
throughout the United States. 

Is it not probable, that this sensible and amia- 
ble woman, perceiving the superiority of the 
Europeans, foreseeing the probability of the sub- 
jugation of her countrymen, and anxious as well 
to soften their destiny, as to save the needless 
effusion of human blood, desired, by her marriage 
with Mr. Rolfe, to hasten the abolition of all 
distinction between Indians and white men ; 
to bind their interests and affections by the near- 
est and most endearing ties, and to make them 
regard themselves as one people, the children 
of the same great family ? If such were her 
wise and benevolent views, and I have no doubt 
but they were, how poorly were they backed by 
the British court? No wonder at the resent- 
ment and indignation with which she saw them 
neglected ; no wonder at the bitterness of the 
disappointment and vexation which she ex- 
pressed to captain Smith, in London, aiising as 
well from the cold reception which she herself 
had met, as from the contemptuous and insult- 
ing point of view in which she found that her 
nation was regarded. 

Unfortunate princess ! She deserved a hap- 
pier fate ! But I am consoled by these reflec- 
15 



170 THE BRITISH SPY. 

tions : first, that she sees her descendants among 
tha most respectable families in Virginia ; and 
that they are not only superior to the false shame 
of disavowing her as their ancestor; but that 
they pride themselves, and with reason too, on 
the honour of their descent ; secondly, that she 
herself has gone to a country, where she finds 
her noble wishes realized ; where the distinction 
of colour is no more ; but where, indeed, it is 
perfectly immaterial " what complexion an In- 
dian or an African sun may have burned" on 
the pilgrim. 

Adieu, my dear S . . . . This train of thought 
has destroyed the tone of my spuits ; when I 
recover them you shall hear further fiom me. 
Once more, adieu. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 171 



LETTER v.* 

Richmond, September^. 

This town, my dear S , is the resi- 
dence of several conspicuous characters ; some 
of whose names we have heard on the other 
side of the Atlantic. You shall be better ac- 
quainted with them before we finish this corres- 
pondence. For the present permit me to 

introduce to your acquaintance, the of the 

commonwealth of Virginia, and the .... of the 
United States. 

These gentlemen are eminent political oppo- 
nents ; the first belonging to the republican, the 
latter leading the van of the federal, party. 
Such is the interest which they both have in 
the confidence and affections of their respective 
parties, that it would be diflScult, if not impos- 

♦ The donee of the manuscript begs that he may not be 
considered as responsible for the accuracy with which cer- 
tain characters are delineated in this letter. He selects it 
purely for the advantage which, he supposes, youthful read- 
ers may derive from the writer's reflections on the characters 
attempted to be drawn by him. 



172 THE BRITISH SPY. 

Bible, for an)'^ Virginian to delineate either of 
their characters justly. Friendship or hostility- 
would be almost sure to overcharge the picture. 
But for me, I have so little connexion with this 
country, or her concerns, either at present or in 
prospect, that I believe I can look on her most 
exalted characters without envy or prejudice of 
any kind ; and draw them with the same cool 
and philosophic impartiality, as if I were a so- 
journer from another planet. If I fail in the 
delineation, the fault must be in the hand or in 
the head, in the pencil or the judgment : and 
not in any prepossession near my heart. 

I choose to bring those two characters before 
you, together ; because they exhibit, with great 
vivacity, an intellectual phenomenon, which I 
have noticed more than once before ; and in the 
solution of which I should be pleased to see your 
pen employed : I mean the very different cele- 
rity in the movement of two sound minds, which 
on all subjects, wherein there is no mixture of 
party zeal, will ultimately come to the same just 
conclusion. What a pity it is, that Mr. Locke, 
while he was dissecting the human understand- 
ing, with such skill and felicity, did not advert 
to this characteristic variance in the minds of 
men. It would have been in his power, by de- 



THE BRITISH SPY, 173 

veloping its causes either to point to the remedy 
if it exist at all, or to relieve the man of slow 
mind, from the labour of fruitless experiments, 
by showing the total impracticability of his cure. 
But, to our gentlemen ; and in order that you 
may know them the more intimately, I will en- 
deavour to prefix to each character a portrait of 
the person. 

The of this commonwealth is the 

same who was, not many years ago, the 

at Paris. His present office is suffi- 
cient evidence of the estimation in which he is 
held by his native state. In his stature, he is 
about the middle height of men, rather firmly 
set, with nothing further remarkable in his per- 
son, except his muscular compactness and appa- 
rent ability to endure labour. His countenance, 
when grave, has rather the expression of stern- 
ness and irascibility ; a smile however, (and a 
Bmile is not unusual with him in a social circle,) 
lights it up to very high advantage, and gives it 
a most impressive and engaging air of suavity 
and benevolence. Judging merely from his 
countenance, he is between the ages of forty-five 
and fifty years. His dress and personal appear- 
ance are those of a plain and modest gentleman. 

He is a man of soft, poHte and even assiduous 
15* 



174 THE BRITISH SPY. 

attentions ; but these, although they are always 
well-timed, judicious, and evidently the offspring 
of an obliging and philanthropic temper, are 
never performed with the striking and captiva- 
ting graces of a Marlborough or a Bolingbroke. 
To be plain, there is often in his manner an in- 
artificial and even an awkward simplicity, which 
while it provokes the smile of a more polished 

person, forces him to the opinion that Mr 

is a man of a most sincere and artless soul. 

Nature has given him a mind neither rapid 
nor rich ; and therefore, he cannot shine on a 
subject which is entirely new to him. But to 
compensate him for this, he is endued with a 
spirit of generous and restless emulation, a judg- 
ment solid, strong and clear, and a habit of appli 
cation, which no difficulties can shake ; no 
labours can tire. 

With these aids simply, he has qualified himself 
for the first honours of this country ; and presents 
a most happy illustration of the truth of the max- 
im, Quisque, sucb fortuncB^ faber. For his emu- 
lation has urged him to perpetual and unremitting 
inquiry ; his patient and unwearied industry has 
concentrated before him all the lights which 
others have thrown on the subjects of his con- 
sideration, together with all those which his own 



THE BRITISH SPY. 175 

mind, by repeated efforts, is enabled to strike ; 
while his sober, steady and faithful judgment 
has saved him from the common error of more 
quick and brilliant geniuses; the too hasty 
adoption of specious, but false conclusions. 

These qualities render him a safe and an able 
counsellor. And by their constant exertion, he 
has amassed a store of knowledge, which, hav- 
ing passed seven times through the crucible, is 
almost as highly corrected as human knowledge 
can be; and which certainly may be much 
more safely relied on than the spontaneous and 
luxuriant growth of a more fertile, but less chas- 
tened mind — " a wild, where weeds and flowers 
promiscuous shoot." 

Having engaged very early, first in the life of 
a soldier, then of a statesman, then of a laborious 
practitioner of the law, and finally, again of a 
pohtician, his intellectual operations have been 
almost entirely confined to juridical and political 
topics. Indeed, it is easy to perceive, that the 
mind of a man, engaged in so active a life 
must possess more native suppleness, versa- 
tility and vigour, than that of Mr , 

to be able to make an advantageous tour of the 
sciences in the rare interval of importunate duties. 
It is possible that the early habit of contemplating 



176 THE BRITISH SPY. 

subjects as expanded as the earth itself, with all 
the relative interests of the great nations thereof, 
may have inspired him with an indifference, 
perhaps an inaptitude, for mere points of litera- 
ture. Algernon Sidney has said that he deems 
all studies unworthy the serious regard of a man, 
except the study of the principles of just govern- 
ment ; and Mr , perhaps, concurs with 

our countryman in this as well as in his other 
principles. Whatever may have been the occa- 
sion, his acquaintance with the fine arts is cer- 
tainly very limited and superficial ; but, making 
allowances for his bias towards republicanism, he 
is a profound and even an eloquent statesmen. 

Knowing him to be attached to that political 
party, who, by their opponents, are called some- 
times democrats, sometimes jacobins ; and aware 
also, that he was a man of warm and even ar- 
dent temper, I dreaded much, when I first 
entered his company, that I should have been 
shocked and disgusted with the narrow, virulent 
and rancorous invectives of party animosity.* 
How agreeably, how delightfully, was I disap- 
pointed ! Not one sentiment of intolerance pol- 
luted his lips. On the contrary, whether they 

* The cloven foot of the Briton is visible ; or, else, why from 
the premises could he have expected such a consequence! 



THE BRITISH SPY. Uf 

be the offspring of rational induction, of the 
habit of surveying men and things on a great 
scale, of native magnanimity, or of a combina- 
tion of all those causes, his principles, as far as 
they were exhibited to me, were forbearing, hb- 
eral, widely extended and great. 

As the elevated ground, which he already 
holds, has been gained merely by the dint of 
appHcation ; as every new step which he mounts 
becomes a mean of increasing his powers still 
further, by opening a wider horizon to his view, 
and thus stimulating his enterprise afresh, rein- 
vigorating his habits, multiplying the materials 
and extending the range of his knowledge ; it 
would be matter of no surprise to me, if, before 
his death, the world should see him at the head 
of the American administration. So much for 

the of the commonwealth of Virginia : 

a living, an honourable, an illustrious monument 
of self-created eminence, worth and greatness ! 

Let us now change the scene and lead forward 
a very different character indeed : a truant, but 
a highly favoured pupil of nature. It would 
seem as if this capricious goddess had finished 
the two characters, purely with the view of ex- 
hibiting a vivid contrast. Nor is this contrast 
confined to their minds. 



175? THE BRITISH SPY. 

The of the United States 

is, in his person, tall, meager, emaciated ; his 
muscles relaxed, and i»is joints so loosely con- 
nected, as not only to disqualify him, apparently, 
for any vigorous exertion of body, but to destroy 
every thing like elegance and harmony in his 
air and movements. Indeed, in his whole ap- 
pearance, and demeanour ; dress, attitudes, gest- 
ure ; sitting, standing or walking ; he is as far 
removed from the idolized graces of lord Ches- 
terfield, as any other gentleman on earth. To 
continue the portrait : his head and face are small 
in proportion to his height ; his complexion 
swarthy ; the muscles of his face, being relaxed, 
give him the appearance of a man of fifty years 
of age, nor can he be much younger; his counte- 
nance has a faithful expression of great good 
humour and hilarity ; while his black eyes — that 
unerring index — possess an irradiating spirit, 
which proclaims the imperial powers of the mind 
that sits enthroned within. 

This extraordinary man, without the aid 
of fancy, without the advantages of person, 
voice, attitude, gesture, or any of the ornaments 
of an orator, deserves to be considered as one of 
tHpmost eloquent men in the world; if eloquence 
may be said to consist in the poAver of seizing 



THE BRITISH SPY, 179 

the attention with irresistible force, and never 
permitting- it to elude the grasp, until the hearer 
has received the conviction which the speaker 
intends. 

As to his person, it has already been described. 
His voice is dry, and hard ; his attitude, in his 
most effective orations, was often extremely awk- 
ward ; as it was not unusual for him to stand 
with his left foot in advance, while all his gest- 
ure proceeded from his right arm, and consisted 
merely in a vehement, perpendicular swing of it, 
from about the elevation of his head, to the bar, 
behind which he was accustomed to stand. 

As to fancy, if she hold a seat in his mind 
at all, which I very much doubt, his gigantic 
genius tramples with disdain, on all her flower- 
decked plats and blooming parterres. How 
then, you will ask, with a look of incredulous 
curiosity, how is it possible that such a man can 
hold the attention of an audience enchained, 
through a speech of even ordinary length ? I 
will tell you. 

He possesses one original, and, almost, super- 
natural faculty ; the faculty of developing a 
subject by a single glance of his mind, and 
detecting at once, the very point on Avhich 
every controversy depends. No matter what 



180 THE BRITISH SPY. 

the question : though ten times more knotty 
than " the gnarled oak," the hghtning of heaven 
is not more rapid nor more resistless, than his 
astonishing penetration. Nor does the exercise 
of it seem to cost him an effort. On the con- 
trary, it is as easy as vision. I am persuaded 
that his eyes do not fly over a landscape and 
take in its various objects with more promptitude 
and facility, than his mind embraces and ana- 
lyzes the most complex subject. 

Possessing while at the bar this intellectual 
elevation, which enabled him to look down and 
comprehend the whole ground at once, he deter- 
mined immediately and without difficulty, on 
which side the question might be most advan- 
tageously approached and assailed. In a bad 
cause his art consisted in laying his premises so 
remotely from the point directly in debate, or 
else in terms so general and so specious, that the 
hearer, seeing no consequence which could be 
drawn from them, was just as willing to admit 
them as not; but his premises once admitted, 
the demonstration, however distant, followed as 
certainly, as cogently, as inevitably, as any 
demonstration in Euclid. 

All his eloquence consists in the apparently 
deep self-conviction, and emphatic earnestness 



THE BRITISH SPY. 181 

of his manner : ihe correspondent simplicity and 
energy of his style ; the close and logical con- 
nexion of his thoughts ; and the easy gradations 
by which he opens his lights on the attentive 
minds of his hearers. 

The audience are never permitted to pause 
for a moment. There is no stopping to weave 
garlands of flowers, to hang in festoons, around 
a favourite argument. On the contrary, every 
sentence is progressive ; every idea sheds new 
hght on the subject ; the listener is kept perpe- 
tually in that sweetly pleasurable vibration, with 
which the mind of man always receives new 
truths ; the dawn advances in easy but unremit- 
ting peace ; the subject opens gradually on the 
view ; until, rising in high relief, in all its native 
colours and proportions, the argument is con- 
summated, by the conviction of the delighted 
hearer. 

The success of this gentleman has rendered it 
doubtful with several literary characters in this 
country, whether a high fancy be of real use or 
advantage to any one but a poet. They contend, 
that although the most beautiful flights of the 
happiest fancy, interspersed through an argu- 
ment, may give an audience the momentary 

delightful swell of admiration, the transient thrill 
16 



182 THE BRITISH SPY. 

of divineGt rapture ; yet, that they produce no 
lasting e/fect in forwarding tlie purpose of the 
speaker : on the contrary, that they break tlie 
unity and disperse the force of an argument, 
which otherwise, advancing in close array, like 
the phalanx of Sparta, would carry every thing 
before it. They give an instance in the cele- 
brated Curran ; and pretend that his fine fancy, 
although it fires, dissolves and even transports his 
audience to a momentary frenzy, is a real and a 
fatal misfortune to his clients ; as it calls oflf the 
attention of the jurors from the intrinsic and 
essential merits of the defence ; echpses the jus- 
tice of the client's cause, in the blaze of the advo- 
cate's talents ; induces a suspicion of the guilt 
which requires such a glorious display of reful- 
gence to divert the inquiry ; and substitutes a 
fruitless short-lived ecstasy, in the place of per- 
manent and substantial conviction. Hence, they 
say, that the client of Mr. Curran is, invariably, 
the victim of the prosecution, which that able 
and eloquent advocate is employed to resist. 

The doctrine, in the abstract, may be true, 
or, as doctor Doubty says, it may not be true; 
for the present, I will not trouble you with the 
expression of my opinion. I fear however, my 
dear S that Mr. Curran's failures may 



THE BRITISH SPY. 183 

be traced to a cause very different from any fault 
either in the style or execution of his enchanting 

defences : a cause but I am forgeUing 

that this letter has yet to cross the Atlantic* 

To return to the of the United 

States. His political adversaries allege that he 
is a mere lawyer; that his mind has been so 
long trammelled by judicial precedent, so long 
habituated to the quart and tierce of forensic 
digladiation, (as doctor Johnson would probably 
have called it,) as to be unequal to the discussion 
of a great question of state. Mr. Curran, in his 
defence of Rowan, seems to have sanctioned the 
probabiUty of such an effect from such a cause, 
when he complains of his own mind as having 
been narrowed and circumscribed, by a strict 
and technical adherence to established forms; 
but in the next breath, an astonishing burst of 
the grandest thought, and a power of compre- 
hension to which there seems to be no earthly 
limit, proves that his complaint, as it relates to 
himself, is entirely without foundation. 

Indeed, if the objection to 

mean any thing more than that he has not had 

* The sentiment, which is suppressed, seems to wear the 
Uvery of Bedford, Moria, and the Prince of Wales. 



184 THE BRITISH SPY. 

the same illumination and exercise in matters 
of state as if he had devoted his life to them, 1 
am unwilling to admit it. The force of a can- 
non is the same, whether pointed at a rampart 
or a man of war, although practice may have 
made the engineer more expert in the one case 
than in the other. So it is clear, that practice 
may give a man a greater command over one 
class of subjects than another ; but the innerent 
energy of his mind remains the same, whither- 
soever it may be directed. From this impression 
I have never seen any cause to wonder at what 
is called a universal genius : it proves only that 
the man has apphed a powerful mind to the 
consideration of a great variety of subjects, and 
pays a compliment rather to his superior indus 
try, than his superior intellect. I am very cer- 
tain that the gentleman of whom we are speak- 
ing, possesses the acwnien which might constitute 
him a universal genius, according to the usual 
acceptation of the phrase. But if he be the 
truant, which his warmest friends represent him 
to be, there is very little probabiUty that he will 
ever reach this distinction. 

Think you, my dear S , that the 

two gentlemen, whom I have attempted to por- 
tray to you, were, according to the notion of 



THE BRITISH SPY. 185 

HelvetiuSj born with equal minds; and that ac- 
cident or education has produced the striking 
difference which we perceive to exist between 
them 7 I wish it were the case ; and that the 

would be pleased to reveal to 

us, by what accident, or what system of educa- 
tion, he has acquired his peculiar sagacity and 
promptitude. Until this shall be done, I fear I 
must consider the hypothesis of Helvetius as a 
splendid and flattering dream. 

But I tire you: — ndieu, foT the pre«3ent, friend 
and guardian tVi y^^ ;«routb. 



186 THE BRITISH SPY. 



LETTER VI. 

Jamestoion, September 27. 

1 HAVE taken a pleasant ride of sixty miles 
down the river, in order, my dear S . . . . , to see 
the remains of the first Enghsh settlement in 
Virginia. 

The site is a very handsome one. The river 
is three miles broad ; and, on the opposite shore, 
the country presents a fine range of bold and 
beautiful hills. But I find no vestiges of the 
ancient town, except the ruins of a church stee- 
ple, and a disordered group of old tombstones. 
On one of these, shaded by the boughs of a tree, 
whose trunk has embraced and grown over the 
edge of the stone, and seated on the head-stone 
of another grave, I now address you. 

What a moment for a lugubrious meditation 
among the tombs ! but fear not ; I have neither 
the temper nor the genius of a Hervey ; and, as 
much as I revere his pious memory, I cannot 
envy him the possession of such a genius and 
such a temper. For my own part, I would not 
have suffered the mournful pleasure of writing 



THE BRITISH SPY. 187 

his book, and Doctor Young's Night Thoughts, 
for all the just fame which they have both gained 
by those celebrated productions. Much rather 
would I have danced and sung, and played the 
fiddle with Yorick, through the whimsical pages 
of Tristram Shandy : that book which every 
body justly censures and admires alternately; 
and which will continue to be read, abused and 
devoured, with ever fresh delight, as long as the 
world shall relish a joyous laugh, or a tear of 
the most delicious feeling. 

By the by, here on one side is an inscription 
on a gravestone, which w^ould constitute no bad 
theme for an occasional meditation from Yorick 
himself. The stone, it seems, covers the grave of 
a man who was born in the neighbourhood of 
London ; and his epitaph concludes the short and 
rudely executed account of his birth and death, by 
declaring him to have been " a great sinner, in 
hopes of a joyful resurrection ;" as if he had sin- 
ned with no other intention, than to give himself 
a fair title to these exulting hopes. But awk- 
wardly and ludicrously as the sentiment is 
expressed, it is in its meaning most just and 
beautiful ; as it acknowledges the boundless 
mercy of Heaven, and glances at that divinely 
consoling proclamation, " come unto me all 



188 THE BRITISH SPY. 

ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest." 

The ruin of the steeple is about thirty feet 
high, and mantled, to its very summit, with 
ivy. It is difficult to look at this veneraol*, 
object, surrounded as it is with these awful 
proofs of the mortality of man, without ex- 
claiming in the pathetic solemnity of our 
Shakspeare, 

" The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherits, shall dissolve ; 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a wreck behind." 

Whence, my dear S , arises the irre- 
pressible reverence and tender aflfection with 
which I look at this broken steeple ? Is it that 
my soul, by a secret, subtile process, invests 
the mouldering ruin with her own powers ; 
imagines it a fellow being ; a venerable old 
man, a Nestor, or an Ossian, who has wit- 
nessed and survived the ravages of successive 
generations, the companions of his youth, and 
of his maturity, and now mourns his OAvn so- 
litary and desolate condition, and hails their 
spirits in every passing cloud? Whatever 
may be the cause, as I look at it, I feel m-y 



THE BRITISH SPY. 189 

soul drawn forward, as by the cords of gen 
tiest sympathy, and involuntarily open my lips 
to offer consolation to the drooping pile. 

Where, my S , is the busy, bustling 

crowd which landed here two hundred years 
ago 7 Where is Smith, that pink of gallantry, 
that flower of chivalry ? I fancy that I can 
see their first, slow and cautious approach to 
tlie shore ; their keen and vigilant eyes pierc- 
ing the forest in every direction, to detect the 
lurking Indian, with his tomahawk, bow and 
arrow. Good Heavens ! what an enterprise ! 
how full of the most fearful perils ! and yet 
how entirely profitless to the daring men who 
personally undertook and achieved it ! Through 
what a series of the most spirit-chilling hard 
ships, had they to toil ! How often did they 
cast their eyes to England in vain ! and with 
what delusive hopes, day after day, did the 
little, famished crew strain their sight to catch 
the white sail of comfort and rehef ! But day 
after day, the sun set, and darkness covered 
the earth ; but no sail of comfort or relief 
came. How often in the pangs of hunger, 
sickness, soHtude and disconsolation, did they 
think of London ; her shops, her markets 
groaning under the weight of plenty; her 



190 THE BRITISH SPY. 

Streets swarming with gilded coaches, bustUng 
hacks, with crowds of lords, dukes and com- 
mons, with healthy, busy, contented faces of 
every description ; and among them none more 
healthy or more contented, than those of their 
ungrateful and improvident directors ! But now 
— where are they, all ? the little, famished colo- 
ny which landed here, and the many-coloured 
crowd of London — where are they, my dear 
S ? Gone, where there is no distinc- 
tion ; consigned to the common earth. Another 
generation succeeded them : which, just as 
busy and as bustling as that which fell before 
it has sunk down into the same nothingness. 
Another and yet another billow has rolled on, 
each emulating its predecessor in height ; tow- 
ering for its moment, and curling its foaming 
honours to the clouds ; then roaring, breaking, 
and perishing on the same shore. 

Is it not strange, that, familiarly and univer- 
sally as these things are known, yet each gene- 
ration is as eager in the pursuit of its earthly 
objects, projects its plans on a scale as extensive 
as and laborious in their execution, with a spirit 
as ardent and unrelaxing, as if this life and this 
world were to last for ever ? It is, indeed, a 
most benevolent interposition of Providence, 



THE BRITISH SPY. 191 

that these palpable and just views of the vanity 
of human life are not permitted entuely to crush 
the spirits, and unnerve the arm of industry. 
But at the same time, methinks, it would be 
wise in man to permit them to have, at least, 
so much weight with him, as to prevent his 
total absorption by the things of this earth, 
and to point some of his thoughts and his 
exertions, to a system of being, far more per- 
manent, exalted and happy. Think not this 
reflection too solemn. It is irresistibly inspired 
by the objects around me ; and, as rarely as 
it occurs, (much too rarely,) it is most certainly 
and solemnly true, my S 

It is curious to reflect, what a nation, in the 
course of two hundred years, has sprung up 
and flourished from the feeble, sickly germ 
which was planted here ! Little did our short- 
sighted court suspect the conflict which she 
was preparing for herself; the convulsive throe 
by which her infant colony would in a few 
years burst from her, and start into a political 
importance that would astonish the earth. 

But Yirginia, my dear S ., as rapidly 

as her population and her wealth must continue 
to advance, wants one most important source 
of solid grandeur ; and that, too, the animating 



192 THE BRITISH SPY. 

soul of a republic. I mean, public spirit ; that 
sacred amor patricE which filled Greece and 
Rome with patriots, heroes and scholars. 

There seems to me to be but one object 
throughout the state ; to grow rich : a passion 
which is visible, not only in the walks of pri- 
vate life, but which has crept into and poisoned 
every pubUc body in the state. Indeed, from 
the very genius of the government, by which 
all the public characters are, at short periodical 
elections, evolved from the body of the people, 
it cannot but happen, that the councils of the 
state must take the impulse of the private 
propensities of the country. Hence, Vii^ginia 
exhibits no great public improvements ; hence, 
in spite of her wealth, every part of the country 
manifests her sufferings, either from the penmy 
of her guardians, or their want of that atten- 
tion and noble pride, wherewith it is their duty 
to consult her appearance. Her roads and 
highways are frequently impassable, sometimes 
frightful ; the very few public works which 
have been set on foot, instead of being carried 
on with spirit, are permitted to languish and 
pine and creep feebly along, in such a manner, 
that the first part of an edifice grows grey with 
age, and almost tumbles in ruins, before the 



THE BRITISH SPY. 193 

last part is lifted from the dust ; highest offi- 
cers are sustained with so avaricious, so nig- 
gardly a hand, that if they are not driven to 
subsist on roots, and drink ditch-water, with 
old Fabricius, it is not for the want of repub- 
lican economy in the projectors of the salaries ; 
and, above all, the general culture of the hu- 
man mind, that best cure for the aristocratic 
distinctions which they profess to hate, that 
best basis of the social and political equality, 
which they profess to love : this culture, instead 
of becoming a national care, is intrusted merely 
to such individuals, as hazard, indigence, mis- 
fortunes or crimes, have forced from their 
native Europe to seek an asylum and bread 
in the wilds of America. 

They have only one public seminary of 
learning : a college in Wilhamsburg, about 
seven miles from this place, which was erected 
in the reign of our William and Mary, derives 
its principal support from their munificence, 
and therefore very properly bears their names- 
This college, in the fastidious folly and affect- 
ation of republicanism, or what is worse, in 
the niggardly spirit of parsimony which they 
dignify with the name of economy, these demo- 
crats have endowed with a few despicable 
17 



194 THE BRITI«JH SPY. 

fragments of surveyors' fees, &c., thus convert- 
ing their ii?,donal academy into a mere laza- 
rettOj and feeding its polite, scientific, and 
highly respectable professors, like a band of 
beggars, on the scraps and crumbs that fall 
from the financial table. And, then, instead of 
aiding and energizing the poUce of the college, 
by a few civil regulations, they permit their 
youth to run riot in all the wildness of dissi- 
pation ; while the venerable professors are 
forced to look on, in the deep mortification of 
conscious impotence, and see their care and 
zeal requited, by the ruin of their pupils and 
the destruction of their seminary. 

These are points which, at present, I can 
oarely touch ; when I have an easier seat and 
writing desk, than a grave and a tombstone, it 
will give me pleasure to dilate on them ; for, it 
will afford an opportunity of exulting in the 
superiority of our own energetic monarchy, 
over this republican body without a soul.* 

For the present, my dear S , I bid 

you adieu. 

♦British insolence! Yet it cannot be denied, however 
painful the admission, that there is some foundation for his 
censures 



THE BRITISH SPY. 195 



LETTER VII. 

Richmond, October 10. 

I HAVE been, my dear S , on an ex- 
cursion through the countries which he along 
the eastern side of the Blue Ridge. A general 
description of that country and its inhabitants 
may form the subject of a future letter. For 
the present, I must entertain you with an ac- 
count of a most singular and interesting adven- 
ture, which I met with, in the course of the 
tour. 

It was one Sunday, as I travelled through 
the county of Orange, that my eye was caught 
by a cluster of horses tied near a ruinous, old, 
wooden house, in the forest, not far from the 
road side. Having frequently seen such ob- 
jects before, in travelling through these states, 
I had no difficulty in understanding that this 
was a place of religious worship. 

Devotion alone should have stopped me, to 
^oin in the duties of the congregation ; but I 
must confess, that curosity, to hear ihe preacher 
of such a ^vilderness, was not the least of my 



195 THE BRITISH SPY. 

motives. On entering, I was struck with his 
preternatural appearance, he was a tall and 
very spare old man ; his head, which was 
covered with a white linen cap, his shrivelled 
hands, and his voice, were all shaking under 
the influence of a palsy ; and a few moments 
ascertained to me that he was perfectly blind. 

The first emotions which touched my breast, 
were those of mingled pity and veneration. 
But ah ! sacred God ! how soon were all my 
feelings changed ! The lips of Plato were 
never more worthy of a prognostic swarm of 
bees, than were the lips of this holy man ! It 
was a day of the administration of the sacra- 
ment ; and his subject, of course, was the pas- 
sion of our Saviour. I had heard the subject 
handled a thousand times : I had thought it 
exhausted long ago. Little did I suppose, that 
in the wild woods of America, I was to meet 
with a man whose eloquence would give to 
this topic a new and more sublime pathos, 
than I had ever before witnessed. 

As he descended from the pulpit, to distri- 
bute the mystic symbols, there was a pecuhar, 
a more than human solemnity in his air and 
manner which made my blood run cold, and 
my whole frame shiver. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 197 

He then drew a picture of the sufferings of 
our Saviour ; his trial before Pilate ; his ascent 
up Calvary; his crucifixion, and his death. 
I knew the whole history ; but never, until then, 
had I heard the circumstances so selected, so 
arranged, so coloured ! It was all new : and 
I seemed to have heard it for the first time in 
my hfe. His enunciation was so deliberate, 
that his voice trembled on every syllable ; and 
every heart in the assembly trembled in unison. 
His pecuhar phrases had that force of descrip- 
tion tliptt the original scene appeared to be, at 
that moment, acting before our eyes. We saw 
the very faces of the Jews : the staring, fright- 
ful distortions of mahce and rage. We saw 
the buffet ; my soul kindled with a flame of 
indignation ; and my hands were involunta- 
rily and convulsively clinched. 

But when he came to touch on the patience, 
the forgiving meekness of our Saviour ; when 
he drew, to the life, his blessed eyes streaming 
in tears to heaven ; his voice breathing to God, 
a soft and gentle prayer of pardon on his ene- 
mies, " Father, forgive them, for they know 
not what they do" — the voice of the preacher^ 
which had all along faltered, grew fainter and 
fainter, until his utterance being entirely ob 
17* 



198 THE BRITISH SPY. 

structed by the force of his feelings, he raised 
his handkerchief to his eyes, and burst into a 
loud and irrepressible flood of grief. The effect 
is inconceivable. The whole house resound- 
ed with the mingled groans, and sobs, and 
shrieks of the congregation. 

It was some time before the tumult had 
subsided, so far as to permit him to proceed. 
Indeed, judging by the usual, but fallacious 
standard of my own weakness, I began to be 
very uneasy for the situation of the preacher. 
For I could not conceive, how he would be 
able to let his audience down from the height 
to which he had wound them, without impair- 
ing the solemnity and dignity of his subject, 
or perhaps shocking them by the abruptness 
of the fall. But — no ; the descent was as 
beautiful and sublime, as the elevation had been 
rapid and enthusiastic. 

The first sentence, with which he broke the 
awful silence, was a quotation from Rousseau, 
" Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus 
Christ, Uke a God !" 

I despair of giving you any idea of the effect 
produced by this short sentence, unless you 
could perfectly conceive the whole manner of 
the man, as well as the pecuhar crisis in the 



THE BRITISH SPY. 199 

discourse. Never before, did I completely 
understand what Demosthenes meant by lay- 
ing such stress on delivery. You are to bring 
before you the venerable figure of the preacher ; 
his blindness, constantly recalling to your 
recollection old Homer, Ossian and Milton, and 
associating with his performance, the melan- 
choly grandeur of their geniuses ; you are to 
imagine that you hear his slow, solemn, well- 
accented enunciation, and his voice of affect- 
ing, trembling melody ; you are to remember 
the pitch of passion and enthusiasm to which 
the congregation were raised ; and then, the 
few minutes of portentous, death-like silence 
which reigned throughout the house ; the 
preacher removing his white handkerchief from 
his aged face, (even yet wet from the recent 
torrent of his tears,) and slowly stretching forth 
the palsied hand which holds it, begins the 
sentence, " Socrates died like a philosopher" — 
then pausing, raising his other hand, pressing 
them both clasped together, with warmth and 
energy to his breast, lifting his " sightless 
balls" to heaven, and pouring his whole soul 
into his tremulous voice — " but Jesus Christ — 
like a God !" If he had been indeed and in 



200 THE BRITISH SPY. 

truth an angel of light, the effect could scarcely 
have been more divhic. 

Whatever I had been able to conceive of the 
sublunity of Massillon, or the force of Bourda- 
loue, had fallen far short of the power which I. 
felt from the delivery of this simple sentence. 
The blood, which just before had rushed in a 
hurricane upon my brain, and, in the violence 
and agony of my feelings, had held my whole 
system in suspense, now ran back into my 
heart, with a sensation which I cannot describe 
— a kind of shuddering delicious horror ! The 
paroxysm of blended pity and indignation, to 
which I had been transported, subsided into 
the deepest self-abasement, humility and ado- 
ration. I had just been lacerated and dissolved 
by sympathy, for our Saviour as a fellow 
creature ; but now, with fear and trembling, I 
adored him as — " a God !" 

If this description give you the impression, 
that this incomparable minister had any thing 
of shallow, theatrical trick in his manner, it 
does him great injustice. I have never seen, 
in any other orator, such a union of simplicity 
and majesty. He has not a gesture, an atti- 
tude or an accent, to which he does not seem 
forced, by the sentiment which he is express- 



THE BRITISH SPV^. 201 

ing. His mind is too serious, too earnest, too 
solicitous, and, at the same time, too dignified, 
to stoop to artifice. Although as far removed 
from ostentation as a man can be, yet it is 
clear from the train, the style and substance 
of his thoughts, that he is, not only a very 
pohte scholar, but a man of extensive and pro 
found erudition. I was forcibly struck with a 
short, yet beautiful character which he drew of 
our learned and amiable countryman, Sir Rob- 
ert Boyle : he spoke of him, as if " his noble 
mind had, even before death, divested herself 
of all influence from his frail tabernacle of 
flesh ;" and called him, in his pecuharly em- 
phatic and impressive manner, " a pure intelli- 
gence : the hnk between men and angels." 

This man has been before my imagination 
almost ever since. A thousand times, as I 
rode along, I dropped the reins of my bridle, 
stretched forth my hand, and tried to imitate 
his quotation from Rousseau ; a thousand times 
I abandoned the attempt in despair, and felt 
persuaded that his peculiar manner and power 
arose from an energy of soul, which nature 
could give, but which no human bemg could 
justly copy. In short, he seems to be altogether 
a being of a former age. or of a totally diflferent 



202 THE BRITISH SPY. 

nature from the rest of men. As I recall, at 
this moment, sevreral of his awfully striking 
attitudes, the chilling tide, with which my 
blood begins to pour along my arteries, re- 
minds me of the emotions produced by the 
first sight of Gray's introductory picture of his 
bard : 

" On a rock, whose haughty brow, 

Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood. 
Robed in the sable garb of wo, 

With haggard eyes the poet stood ; 
(Loose his beard and hoary hair 

Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air :) 
And with a poet's hand and prophet's fire, 

Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre." 

Guess my surprise, when, on my arrival at 
Richmond, and mentioning the name of this 
man, I found not one person who had ever 
before heard of James Waddell ! ! Is it not 
strange, that such a genius as this, so accom- 
pUshed a scholar, so divine an orator, should 
be permitted to languish and die in obscurity, 
within eighty miles of the metropolis of Vir- 
ginia ? To me it is a conclusive argument, 
either that the Virginians have no taste for the 
highest strains of the most sublime oratory, or 
tliat they are destitute of a much more import- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 203 

ant quality, the love of genuine and exalted 
religion. 

Indeed, it is too clear, my friend, that this 
soil abounds more in weeds of foreign birth, 
than in good and salubrious fruits. Among 
others, the noxious weed of infidelity has 
struck a deep, a fatal root, and spread its pes- 
tilential branches far around. I fear that our 
eccentric and fanciful countryman, Godwin, 
has contributed not a little to water and cher- 
ish this pernicious exotic. There is a 
novelty, a splendour, a boldness in his scheme 
of morals, peculiarly fitted to captivate a youth- 
ful and ardent mind. A young man feels his 
dehcacy flattered, in the idea of being emanci- 
pated from the old, obsolete and vulgar motives 
of moral conduct ; and acting correctly from 
motives quite new, refined and subUmated in 
the crucible of pure, abstracted reason. Unfor- 
tunately, however, in this attempt to change 
the motives of his conduct, he loses the old 
ones, while the new, either from being too 
etherial and subhme, or from some other want 
of congeniality, refuse to mix and lay hold of 
the gross materials of his nature. Thus he 
becomes emancipated indeed; discharged not 
only from ancient and vulgar shackles : but 



204 THE BRITISH SPY. 

also, from the modern, finespun, tinselled re 
straints of his divine Godwin. Having im- 
bibed the high spirit of literary adventure, he 
disdains the hmits of the moral world ; and 
advancing boldly to the throne of God, he 
questions him on his dispensations, and 
demands the reasons of his laws. But the 
counsels of heaven are above the ken, not 
contrary to the voice of human reason ; and 
the unfortunate youth, unable to reach and 
measure them, recoils from the attempt, with 
melancholy rashness, into infidelity and deism. 
Godwin's glittering theories are on his lips. 
Utopia or Mezorania, boast not of a purer 
moralist, in words , than the young Godwin- 
ian ; but the unbridled licentiousness of his 
conduct makes it manifest, that if Godwin's 
principles be true in the abstract, they are not 
fit for this system of things ; whatever they 
might be in the repubhc of Plato. 

From a life of inglorious indolence, by far 
too prevalent among the young men of this 
country, the transition is easy and natural to 
unmorality and dissipation. It is at this 
giddy period of life, when a series of dissolute 
courses have debauched the purity and inno- 
cence of the heart, shaken the pillars of the 



THE BRITISH SPY. 205 

understandingj and converted her sound and 
wholesome operations into Httle more than a 
set of feverish starts and incoherent and deU- 
rious dreams ; it is in such a situation that a 
new-fans^led theory is welcomed as an amusing 
guest, and deism is embraced as a bahny 
comforter against the pangs of an offended 
conscience. This coahtion, once formed and 
habitually consolidated, " farewell, a long fare- 
well" to honour, genius and glory! From 
such a gulf of complicated ruin, few have the 
energy even to attempt an escape. The mo- 
ment of cool reflection, which should save 
them, is too big with horror to be endured. 
Every plunge is deeper, until the tragedy is 
finally wound up by a pistol or a halter. Do 
not believe that I am drawing from fancy: 
the picture is unfortunately true. Few dramas, 
indeed, have yet reached their catastrophe ; but, 
too many are in a rapid progress toward it. 

These thoughts are affecting and oppressive. 
I am glad to retreat from them, by bidding you 
adieu ; and offering my prayers to heaven, that 
you may never lose the pure, the genial con- 
solations of unshaken faith, and an approving 

conscience. Once more, my dear S , 

adieu. 

18 



206 THE BRITISH SPV 



LETTER VIII. 

Richmond, October 15. 
Men of talents in this country, my dear 

S J have been generally bred to the 

profession of the law ; and indeed, throughout 
the United States, I have met with few per- 
sons of exalted intellect, whose powers have 
been directed to any other pursuit. The bar, 
in America is the road to honour ; and hence, 
although the profession is graced by the most 
shining geniuses on the continent, it is incum- 
bered also by a melancholy group of young 
men, who hang on the rear of the bar, like 
Goethe's sable clouds in the western horizon. 
I have been told that the bar of Virginia was, 
a fcAV years ago, pronounced by the supreme 
court of the United States, to be the most en- 
Hghtened and able on the continent. I am 
very incompetent to decide on the merit of 
their legal acquirements ; but, putting aside the 
partiality of a Briton, I do not think either of 
the gentlemen by p.ny means so eloquent or 



THE BRITISH SPY. 207 

SO erudite as our countryman Erskine. With 
your permission, however, I will make you 
better acquainted with the few characters who 
lead the van of the profession. 

Mr has great personal advantages. 

A figure large and portly ; his features uncom- 
monly fine ; his dark eyes and his whole 
countenance lighted up with an expression of 
the most conciliating sensibility ; his attitudes 
dignified and commanding ; his gesture easy 
and graceful ; his voice perfect harmony ; and 
his whole manner that of an accomplished 
and engaging gentleman. I have reason to 
beheve that the expression of his countenance 
does no more than justice to his heart. If I 
be correctly informed, his feelings are exquisite ; 
and the proofs of his benevolence are various 
and clear beyond the possibility of doubt. He 
has filled the highest ofllices in this common- 
wealth and has very long maintained a most 
respectable rank in his profession. His char- 
acter, with the people, is that of a great lawyer 
and an eloquent speaker ; and, indeed, so many 
men of discernment and taste entertain this 
opinion, and my prepossessions in his favour 
are so strong, on account of the amiable quali- 
ties of his character, that T am very well dis- 



208 THE BRITISH SPY. 

posed to doubt the accuracy of my own yidg 
ment as it relates to him. 

To me, however, it seems, that his mind, as 
IS often but not invariably the case, corres- 
ponds with his personal appearance : that is, 
that it is turned rather for ornament than for 
severe use : pompce, quam pugnce aptior^ as 
Tully expresses it. His speeches, I think, 
deserve the censure which lord Verulam pro- 
nounces on the writers posterior to the reform- 
ation of the church. " Luther," says he, 
" standing alone, against the church of Rome, 
found it necessary to awaken all antiquity in 
his behalf : this introduced the study of the dead 
languages, a taste for the fulness of the Cice- 
ronean manner ; and hence the still preva- 
lent error of hunting more after words than 
matter, and more after the choiceness of the 
phrase and the round and clean composi- 
tion of the sentence, and the sweet fallings 
of the clauses, and the varying and illustration 
of their works with tropes and figures, than 
after the weight of matter, worth of subject, 
soundness of argument, life of invention, or 
depth of judgment." 

Mr 's temper and habits lead him to 

the sweUJng, stately manner of Bolingbroke 



THE BRITISH SPY. 209 

but either from the want of promptitude and 
richness of conception, or his too sedulous 
concern and " huntmg after words," he does 
not maintain that manner, smoothly and hap- 
pily. On the contrary, the spuits of his hear- 
ers, after having been awakened and put into 
sweet and pleasant motion, have their tide, 
not unfrequently checked, ruffled and painfully 
obstructed by the hesitation and perplexity of 
the speaker. It certainly must demand, my 

dear S , a mind of very high powers to 

support the swell of Bolingbroke, with felicity. 
The tones of voice, which naturally belong to 
it, keep the expectation continually " on tiptoe," 
and this must be gratified not only by the most 
oily fluency, but by a course of argument clear 
as hght, and an alternate play of imagination 
as grand and magnificent as HerschelFs dance 
of the sidereal system. The work requires to 
be perpetually urged forward. One interrup- 
tion in the current of the language, one poor 
thought or abortion of fancy, one vacant 
aversion of the eye, or relaxation in the ex- 
pression of the face, entirely breaks and dis- 
solves the whole charm. The speaker, indeed, 
may go on and evolve, here and there, a pretty 
18* 



210 THE BRITISH SPY. 

thought ; but the wondrous magic of the 
whole is gone for ever. 

Whether it be from any defect in the organi- 
zation of Mr 's mind, or that his pas- 
sion for the fine dress of his thoughts is the 
master passion, which, " hkc Aaron's serpent, 
swallows up the rest," I will not undertake to 
decide ; but perhaps it results from one of those 
two causes, that all the arguments, which I 
have ever heard from him, are defective in that 
important and most material character, the 
lucidus ordo. 

I have been sometimes inclined to believe, 
that a man's division of his argument would 
be generally found to contain a secret history 
of the difficulties which he himself has encoun- 
tered in the investigation of his subject. I am 
firmly persuaded that the extreme prolixity of 
many discourses to which we are doomed to 
listen, is chargeable, not to the fertility, but to 
the darkness and impotence of the brain which 
produces them. A man, who sees his object 
m a strong light, marches directly up to it, in 
a right line, with the firm step of a soldier ; 
while another, residing in a less illumined 
zone, wanders and reels in the twilight of the 
brain, and ere he attain his object, treads a 



THE BRITISH SPY. 211 

maze as intricate and perplexing as that of the 
celebrated labyrinth of Crete. 

It was remarkable of the of the 

United States, whom I mentioned to you in a 
former letter as looking through a subject at 
a single glance, that he almost invariably 
seized one strong point only, the pivot of the 
controversy ; this point he would enforce with 
all his powers, never permitting his own mind 
to waver, nor obscuring those of his hearers, 
by a cloud of inferior, unimportant considera- 
tions. But this is not the manner of Mr 

I suspect, that in the preparatory investigation 
of a subject, he gains his ground by slow and 
laborious gradations ; and that his difficulties 
are numerous and embarrassing. Hence it is^ 
perhaps, that his points are generally too multi- 
farious ; and although, among the rest, he ex- 
hibits the strong point, its appearance is too 
often like that of Issachar, " bow'd down be- 
tween two burthens." I take this to be a very 
ill-judged method. It may serve indeed to make 
the multitude stare ; but it frustrates the great 
purpose of the speaker. Instead of giving a 
simple, lucid and animated view of a subject, it 
overloads, confounds and fatigues the listener. 
Instead of leaving him under the vivacitv of 



212 THE BRITISH SPY. 

clear and full conviction, it leaves him bewil- 
dered, darkling, asleep ; and when he awakes, 
he 

" wakes, emerging from a sea of dream 



Tumultuous ; where liis wreck'd, desponding thougKt, 
From wave to wave of wild uncertainty, 
At random drove, — her helm of reason lost." 

I incline to believe that if there be a blemish 
in the mind of this amiable gentleman, it is 
the want of a strong and masculine judgment. 
If such an agent had wielded the sceptre of 
his understanding, it is presumable, that, ere 
this, it would have chastised his exuberant 
fondness for literary finery, and the too osten 
tatious and unfortunate parade of points in his 
argument, on which I have just commented. 
If I may confide in the replies which I have 
heard given to him at the bar, this want of 
judgment is sometimes manifested in his 
selection and application of law cases. But of 
this I can judge only from the triumphant air 
with which his adversaries seize his cases and 
appear to turn them against him. 

He is certainly a man of close and elaborate 
research. It would seem to me, however, my 

dear S , that in order to constitute a 

■scientific lawyer, something more is necessary 



THE BRITISH SPY. 213 

than the patient and persevering revolution of 
the leaves of the author. Does it not requue 
a discernment sufficiently clear and strong to 
eviscerate the principles of each case ; a judg- 
ment potent enough to digest, connect and 
systematize them, and to distinguish, at once, 
in any future combination of circumstances, 
the very feature which gives or refuses to a 
principle, a just application? Without such 
intellectual properties, I should conjecture, (for 
on this subject I can only conjecture,) that a 
man could not have the fair advantage and 
perfect command of his reading. For, in the 
first place, I should apprehend, that he would 
never discover the application of a case, with- 
out the recurrence of all the same circumstan- 
ces ; in the next place, that his cases would 
form a perfect chaos, a rudis indigestaque 
moles, in his brain ; and lastly, that he would 
often and sometimes perhaps fatally mistake 
the identifying feature, and furnish his antago- 
nist with a formidable weapon against himself. 
But let me fly from this entangled wilder- 
ness, of which I have so little knowledge, and 

return to Mr Although when brought 

to the standard of perfect oratory, he may be 
subject to the censures which I have passed 



214 THE BRITISH SPY. 

on him ; yet it is to be acknowledged, and T 
make the acknowledgment with pleasure, 
that he is a man of extensive reading, a well- 
informed lawyer, a fine belles lettrcs scholar, 
and sometimes a beautiful speaker. 

The gentleman who has been pointed out 
to me as holding the next if not an equal grade 

in the profession, is Mr He is, I am 

told, upwards of forty years of age ; but his 
look, I think, is more juvenile. As to stature, 
he is about the ordinary height of men ; his 
form genteel, his person agile. He is distin- 
guished by a quickness of look, a sprightly 
step, and that peculiarly jaunty air, which I 
have heretofore mentioned, as characterizing 
the people of New-York. It is an air, hoAvever, 
which, (perhaps, because I am a plain son of 
John Bull,) is not entirely to my taste. Strik- 
ing, indeed, it is ; highly genteel, and calcu- 
lated for eclat ; but then, I fear, that it may be 
censured as being to artificial : as having, 
therefore, too little appearance of connexion 
with the heart ; too little of that amiable sim- 
plicity, that winning softness, that vital warmth, 
which I have felt in the manner of a certain 
friend of mine. This objection, however, is 
not meant to touch his heart, I do not mean 



THE BRITISH SPY. 215 

o censure his sensibility or his virtues. The 
remark appUes only to the mere exterior of 
his manners ; and even the censure which I 
have pronounced on that, is purely the result 
of a different taste, which is, at least, as proba- 
bly wrong as that of Mr 

Indeed, my dear S , I have seen few 

eminent men in this or any other country, who 
have been able so far to repress the exulting" 
pride of conscious talents, as to put on the 
behaviour which is calculated to win the hearts 
of the people. I mean that behaviour, which 
steers between a low-sph-ited, cringing syco- 
phancy and ostentatious condescension on the 
one hand, and a haughty self-importance and 
supercilious contempt of one's fellow creatures 
on the other ; that behaviour, in which, while 
a man displays a just respect for his own 
feelings and character, he seems, nevertheless, 
to concentre himself with the disposition and 
inclination of the person to whom he speaks ; 
in a word, that happy behaviour, in which 
versatility and candour, modesty and dignity, 
are sweetly and harmoniously tempered and 
blended. Any Englishman, but yourself, my 

S , would easily recognize the original 

from which this latter picture is drawn. 



216 THE BRITISH SPY. 

This leads me off from the character of 

Mr J to remark a moral defect, which I 

have several times observed in this country. 
Many well meaning men, having heard much 
of the hollow, ceremonious professions and 
hypocritical grimace of courts ; disgusted with 
every thing which savours of aristocratic oi 
monarchic parade ; and smitten with the love of 
republican simplicity and honesty ; have fallen 
into a ruggedness of deportment, a thousand 
times more proud, more intolerable and dis- 
gusting, than Shakspeare's foppish lord, with 
his chin new reaped and pouncet box. They 
scorn to conceal their thoughts ; and in the 
expression of them confound bluntness with 
honesty. Their opinions are all dogmas. It 
is perfectly immaterial to them what any one 
else may think. Nay, many of them seem to 
have forgotten, that others can think, or feel 
at all. In pursuit of the haggard phantom of 
republicanism,* they dash on, like Sir Joseph 
Banks, giving chase to the emperor of Mo- 
rocco, regardless of the sweet and tender blos- 
soms of sensibility, which fall and bleed, and 



♦ This phrase is scarcely excusable, even in a Briton and 
a lord. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 217 

die behind them. What an error is this, my 

dear S 1 I am frequently disposed to 

ask such men, "think you, that the stern and 
implacable Achilles was an honester man than 
the gentle, humane and considerate Hector? 
Was the arrogant and imperious Alexander an 
honester man than the meek, compassionate, 
and amiable Cyrus ? Was the proud, the rough, 
the surly Cato, more honest than the soft, 
polite and delicate Scipio Africanus ? In short, 
are not honesty and humanity compatible? 
And what is the most genuine and captivating 
politeness, but humanity refined?" 

But to return from this digression. The 

qualities, by which Mr strikes the mul 

titude, are his ingenuity and his wit. But 
those, who look more closely into the anatomy 
of his mind, discover many properties of much 
higher dignity and importance. This gentle- 
man, in my opinion, unites in himself a greater 
diversity of talents and acquirements, than any 
other at the bar of Virginia. He has the repu- 
tation, and I doubt not a just one, of possess- 
ing much legal science. He has an exquisite 
and a highly cultivated taste for polite litera- 
ture ; a genius quick and fertile ; a style pure 
and classic : a stream of perspicuous and beau- 
19 



218 THE BRITISH SPY". 

tiful elocution ; an ingenuity which no diffi- 
culties can entangle or embarrass ; and a wit, 
whose vivid and briUiant coruscation, can gild 
and decorate the darkest subject. He chooses 
his ground, in the first instance with great 
judgment ; and when, in the progress of a 
cause, an unexpected evolution of testimony, 
or intermediate decisions from the bench, have 
beaten that ground from vmder him^ he pos- 
sesses a happy, an astonishing versatility, by 
which he is enabled at once, to take a new 
position, without appearing to have lost an 
atom, either in the measure or stability of his 
basis. This is a faculty which I have ob- 
served before in an inferior degree ; but 
Mr is so adroit, so superior in the exe- 
cution of it, that in him it appears a new and 
peculiar talent ; his statements, his narrations, 
his arguments, are all as transparent as the 
light of day. He reasons logically, and de- 
claims very handsomely. It is true, he never 
brandishes the Olympic thunder of Homer, 
but then he seldom, if ever, sinks beneath the 
chaste and attractive majesty of Virgil. 

His fault is, that he has not veiled his inge- 
nuity with sufficient address. Hence, I am 
told, that he is considered as a Proteus ; and the 



THE BRITISH SPY. 219 

courts are disposed to doubt their senses even 
when he appears in his proper shape. But in 
spite of this adverse and unpropitious distrust, 

M 's popularity is still in its flood ; and 

he is justly considered as an honour and an 
ornament to his profession. 

Adieu, my friend, for the present. Ere long 
we may take another tour through this gallery 
of portraits, if more interesting objects do not 
call us off. Again, my S , good night. 



220 THE BRITISH SPY. 



LETTER IX. 

Richmond, October^, 

Talents, my dear S , wherever the^f 

have had a suitable theatre, have never failed 
to emerge from obscurity and assume their 
proper rank in the estimation of the world. 
The celebrated Camden is said to have been 
the tenant of a garret. Yet from the darkness, 
poverty and ignominy, of this residence, he 
advanced to distinction and wealth, and graced 
the first ofiices and titles of our island. It is 
impossible to turn over the British biography, 
without being struck and charmed by the mul- 
titude of correspondent examples ; a venerable 
group of novi homines, as the Romans called 
them ; men, who, from the lowest depths of 
obscurity and want, and without even the in- 
fluence of a patron, have risen to the first 
honours of their country, and founded their 
own families anew. In every nation, and in 
every age, great talents, thrown fairly into the 
point of public observation, will invariably pro- 



TKE BRITISH SPY. 

duce the same ultimate effect. The jealous 
pride of power may attempt to repress and 
crush them ; the base and mahgnant rancour 
of impotent spleen and envy may strive to 
embarrass and retard their flight; but these 
efforts, so far from achieving their ignoble pur- 
pose, so far from producing a discernible obU- 
quity in the ascent of genuine and vigorous 
talents, will serve only to increase theu- mo- 
mentum and mark their transit with an addi- 
tional stream of glory. 

When the great earl of Chatham first made 
his appearance in our house of commons, and 
began to astonish and transport the British 
parhament, and the British nation, by the bold- 
ness, the force and range of his thoughts, and 
the celestial fire and pathos of his eloquence, 
it is well known, that the minister Walpole, 
and his brother Horace, (fi-om motives very 
easily understood,) exerted all their wit, all 
their oratory, all their acquirements of every 
description, sustained and enforced by the un- 
feeUng "insolence of office," to heave a moun- 
tain on his gigantic genius, and hide it from 
the world. Poor and powerless attempt ! 
The tables were turned. He rose upon them 
in the might and irresistible energy of hi» 



THE BRITISH SPY. 

genius ; and in spite of all their convolutions, 
frantic agonies and spasms, he strangled them 
and their whole faction with as much ease as 
Hercules did the serpent ministers of jealousy 
that were sent to assail his infant cradle. Who 
can turn over the debates of the day, and read 
the account of this conflict between youthful 
ardour and hoary headed cunning and power, 
without kindhng in the cause of the tyro, and 
shouting at his victory ? That they should 
have attempted to pass off the grand, yet solid 
and judicious operations of a mind like his, as 
being mere theatrical start and emotion; the 
giddy, hair-brained eccentricities of a romantic 
boy ! That they should have had the presump- 
tion to suppose themselves capable of chaining 
down to the floor of the parliament, a genius so 
ethereal, towering, and sublime ! Why did they 
not, in the next breath, by way of crowning 
the climax of vanity, bid the magnificent fire- 
ball to descend from its exalted and appropriate 
region, to perform its splendid tour along the 
surface of the earth ?* 

♦ See a beautiful note in Darwin's Botanic Garden, in 
which the writer suggests the probability of three concen- 
tric strata of our atmosphere, in which, or between them, 
are produced four kinds of meteors ; in the lowest, the com- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 233 

When the son of this great man too, our 
present minister and his compeer and rival, 
our friend, first commenced their pohtical ca- 
reer, the pubUc papers teemed with strictures 
on their respective talents ; the first was cen- 
sured as being merely a dry and even a flimsy 
reasoner ; the last was stigmatized as an 
empty declaimer. But error and misrepresent- 
ation soon expire, and are forgotten ; while 
truth rises upon their ruins, and " flourishes 
in eternal youth." Thus, the false, the light, 
fugacious newspaper criticisms, which at- 
tempted to dissect and censure the arrange- 
ment of those gentlemen's talents, have been 
long since swept away by the besom of ob- 
livion. They wanted truth, that soul, which 
alone can secure immortality to any literary 



mon lightning ; in the next, shooting stars ; and the highest 
region, which he supposes to consist of inflammable gas 
tenfold ligher than the common atmospheric air, he makes 
the theatre of the northern light, and fireball or draco volans. 
He recites the history of one of the latter, seen in the year 
1758, which was estimated to have been a mile and a half in 
circumference; to have been one hundred miles high ; and 
to have moved toward the north, thirty miles in a second. 
It had a real tail, many miles long, which threw off sparks 
in its course ; and the whole exploded with a sound like that 
of distant thunder. — Bot, Garden, Pari 1, Note 1. 



2^ THE BRITI3H I^PY. 

work. And Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox have for 
many years been reciprocally and alternately 
recognized, just as their subject demands it, 
either as close and cogent reasoners, or as 
beautiful and superb rhetoricians. 

Talents, therefore, which are before the pub- 
lic, have nothing to dread, either from the 
jealous pride of power, or from the transient 
misrepresentations of party, spleen, or envy. 
In spite of opposition from any cause, their 
buoyant spiiit will lift them to their proper 
grade : it would be unjust that it should lift 
them higher. 

It is true, there always are, and always will 
be, in every society, individuals, who will 
fancy themselves examples of genius over 
looked, underrated, or invidiously oppressed. 
But the misfortune of such persons is imputa- 
ble to their own vanity, and not to the public 
opinion, which has weighed and graduated 
them. 

We remember many of our schoolmates, 
whose geniuses bloomed and died within 
the walls of Alma Mater ; but whose bodies 
still Uve, the moving monuments of departed 
splendour, the anunated and affecting remem- 
brances of the extreme fragility of the human 



THE BRITISH SPY. 225 

intellect. We remember others, who have en- 
tered on public life with the most exulting 
promise ; have flown from the earth, like 
rockets ; and, after a short and brilhant flight, 
have bursted with one or two explosions — to 
blaze no more. Others, by a few premature 
scintillations of thought, have led themselves 
and their partial friends, to hope that they were 
fast advancing to a dawn of soft and beauteous 
hght, and a meridian of bright and gorgeous 
effulgence ; but theh day has never yet broken ; 
and never will it break. They are doomed for 
ever to that dim, crepuscular light, which sur- 
rounds the frozen poles, when the sun has 
retreated to the opposite circle of the heavens. 
Theirs is the eternal glimmering of the brain ; 
and their most luminous displays are the 
faint twinkhngs of the glow-worm. We have 
seen others, who, at their start, gain a casual 
projectility, which rises them above their 
proper grade ; but by the just operation of their 
specific gravity, they are made to subside again, 
and settle ultimately in the sphere to which 
they properly belong. 

All these characters, and many others who 
have had even slighter bases for their once 
sanguine, but now blasted hopes, form a quer- 



226 THE BRITISH SPY. 

ulous and melancholy band of moonstruck de- 
claimers against the injustice of the world, the 
agency of envy, the force of destiny, <fec., 
charging their misfortune on every thing but 
the true cause : their own want of intrinsic 
sterling merit ; their want of that copious, 
perennial spring of great and useful thought, 
without which a man may hope in vain for 
growing reputation. Nor are they always 
satisfied with wailing their own destiny, pour- 
ing out the bitterest imprecations of their souls 
on the cruel stars which presided at their 
birth, and aspersing the justice of the public 
opinion which has scaled them : too often in 
the contortions and pangs of disappointed am- 
bition, they cast a scowling eye over the 
world of man ; start back and blanch at the 
lustre of superior merit; and exert all the 
diabolical incantations of their black art, to 
conjure up an impervious vapour, in order to 
shroud its glories from the world. But it is 
all in vain. In spite of every thing, the pub- 
lic opinion will finally do justice to us all. 
The man who comes fairly before the world, 
and who possesses the great and vigorous 
stamina which entitle him to a 7iich in the 
temple of glory, has no reason to dread the 



THE BRITISH SPY. 227 

ultimate result ; however slow his progress 
may be, he will in the end most indubitably 
receive that distinction. While the rest, " the 
swallows of science," the butterflies of genius, 
may flutter for their' spring ; but they will soon 
pass away and be remembered no more. No 
enterprising man, therefore, (and least of all 
the truly great man,) has reason to droop or 
repine at any efforts which he may suppose 
to be made with the view to depress him ; 
since he may rely on the universal and un- 
changing truth, that talents, which are before 
the world, will most inevitably find their pro- 
per level ; and this is, certainly, all that a just 
man should desire. Let, then, the tempest of 
envy or of malice howl around him. His 
genius will consecrate him ; and any attempt 
to extinguish that, will be as unavailing as 
would a human effort " to quench the stars." 

I have been led further into these reflections 
than I had anticipated. The train was started 
by casting my eyes over Yiiginia ; observing 
the very few who have advanced on the thea- 
tre of public observation, and the very many 
who will remain for ever behind the scenes. 

What frequent instances of high, native 
genius have I seen springing in the wilder- 



228 TOK BRITISH SPY. 

nesses of this country ; genius, whose blos- 
soms the hght of science has never courted 
into expansion ; genius, which is doomed to 
fall and die, far from the notice and the haunts 
of men ! How often, as I have held my way 
through the western forests of this state, and 
reflected on the vigorous shoots of superior 
intellect, which were freezing and perishing 
there for the want of culture ; how often have 
I recalled the moment, when our pathetic 
Gray, reclining under the mouldering elm of 
his country churchyard, while the sigh of 
genial sympathy broke from his heart, and 
the tear of noble pity started in his eye, ex- 
claimed, 

" Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial hrc, 
Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd, 
Or wak'd to ecstacy the living lyre. 

But knowledge to their eyes, her ample page, 
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll ; 

Chill penury repress'd their noble rage. 
And froze the genial current of their soul. 

Full many a gem of purest ray serene. 

The dark, unfatliom'd caves of ocean bear ; 

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen. 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 229 

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast, 
The little tyrant of his fields withstood- 

Some mute, inglorious Milton, here may rest ; 
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood. 

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command, 
The tlireats of pain and ruin to despise, 

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, 
And read their history in a nation's eyes. 

Their lot forbade"— 

The heart of a philanthropist, no matter to 
what country or what form of government he 
may belong, immediately inquires, " And is 
there no mode to prevent this melancholy 
waste of talents ? Is there no mode by which 
the rays of science might be so diffused over 
the state, as to call forth each latent bud into 
life and luxuriance ?" There is such a mode : 
and what renders the legislature of this state 
still more inexcusable, the plan by which these 
important purposes might be effected, has been 
drawn out and has lain by them for nearly 
thirty years. The declaration of th« inde- 
pendence of this commonwealth was made in 
the month of May, 1776.* In the fall of that 



♦ This is a fact which the public journals of the stat6 
established beyond controversy ; although the legal process 
20" 



230 THE BllITISH SPY. 

year, a statute, or, as it is called here, " an act 
of assembly," was made, providing that a 
committee of five persons should be appointed 
to prepare a code of laws, adapted to the change 
of the state government. This code was to 
be submitted to the legislature of the country, 
and to be ratified or rejected by their sufiVage. 

In the ensuing November, by a resolution 
of the same legislature, Thomas JeflTerson, 
Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, George 
Mason and Thomas Ludwell Lee, esquires, 
were appointed a committee to execute the 
work in question. It was prepared by the 
three first named gentlemen ; the first of them 
now the President of the United States ; the 
second, the president of the supreme court of 
appeals of Virginia, and the third, the judge of 
the high court of chancery at this place. 

I have perused this system of state police 
with admiration. It is evidently the work of 
minds of most astonishing greatness ; capable, 
at once, of a grand, profound and comprehen- 
sive survey of the present and future interest 

and other public acts of Virginia modestly waive this pre- 
cedence, and date the foundation of the commonwealth on 
the 4th of July, 1776, the day on which the declaration of the 
independence of the United States was promulged. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 231 

and glory of the whole state ; and of piirsuing 
that interest and glory through all the remote 
and minute ramifications of the extensive and 
elaborate detail. 

Among other wise and highly patriotic bills 
which are proposed, there is one for the more 
general diffusion of knowledge. After a pre- 
amble, in which the importance of the subject 
to the republic is most ably and eloquently 
announced, the bill proposes a simple and 
beautiful scheme, whereby science (hke justice 
under the institutions of our Alfred) would 
have been '^carried to every man's door." 
Genius, instead of having to break its way 
through the thick opposing clouds of native 
obscurity, indigence and ignorance, was to be 
sought for through every family in the com- 
monwealth ; the sacred spark, wherever it was 
detected, was to be tenderly cherished, fed and 
fanned into a flame ; its innate properties and 
tendencies were to be developed and examined, 
and then cautiously and judiciously invested 
with all the auxiliary energy and radiance of 
which its character was susceptible. 

What a plan was here to give stability and 
soUd glory to the republic ! If you ask me why 
it has never been adopted, I answer, that as a 



232 THE BRITISH SPY. 

foreigner, 1 can perceive no possible reason for 
it, except that the comprehensive views and 
generous patriotism which produced the bill, 
have not prevailed throughout the country, 
nor presided in the body on whose vote the 
adoption of the bill depended. I have new 
reason to remark it, almost every day, that 
there is throughout Virginia, a most deplorable 
destitution of public spirit, of the noble pride 
and love of country. Unless the body of the 
people can be awakened from this fatal apathy ; 
unless their thoughts and their feelings can be 
urged beyond the narrow confines of their own 
private affairs; unless they can be strongly 
inspired with the public zeal, the amor patricB. 
of the ancient republics, the national embelUsh- 
ment, and the national grandeur of this opu- 
lent state, must be reserved for very distant 
ages. 

Adieu, my S ; perhaps you will hear 

from me again before I leave Richmond. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 233 



AN APOLOGY 

IN REPLY TO A HINT. 

The letters of the British Spy were furnished 
to amuse the citizens of the town and country, 
and not to give pain to any one human being. 
Accordingly, nothing has been said in censure 
of the integrity, the philanthropy, benevolence, 
charity, or any other moral or religious virtue 
or grace of any one Virginian, who has been 
introduced mto those letters. Nothing, indeed, 
could be justly said on those heads, in censure 
of either of the gentlemen. It is true, that 
some letters have been published, which have 
attempted to analyze the minds of three or four 
well known citizens of this state, and in order 
to designate them more particularly, a descrip- 
tion of the person and manner of each gentle- 
man was given. This has been called " throw- 
ing stones at other people's glass houses," and 
the person who has communicated those letters 
(gratuitously styled their " author") is politely 
reminded that he himself resides " in a glass 

house." 

20* 



334 THE BRITISH SPY. 

If this be correctly understood, it implies a 
threat of retaliation ; but all that the laws of 
retaliation could justify, would be to amuse 
the town and country with a description of 
the person, manner and mind of the author 
(as he is called) of the British Spy. He fears, 
however, that it would puzzle the hinter, what- 
ever his genius may be, to render so barren a 
subject interesting and amusing to the public ; 
and he would be much obliged to the hinter if 
he could make it appear that he (the furnisher 
of the letters) deserves to be drawn into com- 
parison, either as to person, manner, or mind, 
with any one of the gentlemen delineated by 
the British Spy. As to his person, indeed, he 
is less solicitous ; the defects of that were im- 
posed on him by nature ; and there is no 
principle better established than this general 
principle of eternal truth and justice, that no 
man ought to be censured for the contingencies 
over which he had no controul. As to his 
manner, he has as little objection to a public 
description of that as his person. 

To save the trouble of others, however, he 
relinquishes all pretensions either to the striking 
elegance which is calculated to excite admira- 
tion and respect, or to the conciliating grace 



THE BRITISH SPY. 235 

and vital warmth which are qualified to gain 
enthusiastic friends. His manner is probably 
such as would be produced, nine times out of 
ten, by the rustic education to which he was 
exposed. 

As to his mind, it is almost such as nature 
made it. He cannot boast with Gray, that 
"science frowned not on his humble birth." 
But what of this '? A man may very accurately 
anatomize the powers of a mind far superior 
to his own. It is not improbable Zoilus's criti- 
cisms of Homer were just ; since every nod of 
Homer's was a fair subject of criticism. Yet 
who will suppose that Zoilus would have pro- 
duced such a work as the Iliad ? It is impos- 
sible to read Dennis's criticisms of Addison's 
Cato without being forcibly struck with their 
justice, and wondering that they have never 
before occurred to ourselves. Yet there is no 
man, who will therefore pronounce the genius 
of Dennis equal to that of Addison. These 
facts are so palpable and so well understood, 
that the person who furnished the letters of the 
British Spy (even if he had been their author) 
could scarcely have had the presumption to 
suppose, nor, I trust, the injustice to desire, that 
the public would pronounce his mind free 



THE BRITISH SPY. 

from the defects, much less indued with the 
energies and beauties of those which he criti- 
cises. 

But where is the harm which has been 
done? Who are the gentlemen introduced 
into the British Spy ? Are they young men 
just emerging into notice, and concerning 
whom the public have yet to form an opinion ? 
Far from it. They are gentlemen, who have 
long been, and who still are displaying them- 
selves in the very centre of the circle of general 
observation. They have not hid their light 
under a bushel. Their city is built on a high 
. hill. There is not a feature of their persons, 
nor a quality of their mind or manner, which 
has not been long and well known, and re- 
marked, commented on, criticised, repeated and 
reiterated a thousand and ten thousand times 
in every circle and every corner of the country. 

Was it in the power, then, of any remarks 
in an anonymous and fugitive newspaper pub- 
lication, either to injure or serve gentlemen so 
well and so eminently known ? On the con- 
trary, if those remarks were untrue, they would 
be instantaneously and infallibly corrected by 
the public opinon and knowledge of the sub- 
ject ; if the remarks Avere true, they would add 



THE BRITISH SPY. 237 

no new fact to the public opinion and the public 
knowledge. Thinking thus, nothing was more 
distant, either from the expectation or wish of 
the person who has furnished the press with 
the letters of the British Spy, than that he was 
about to do an injury to the character, or to 
inflict a wound on the feelings of any citizen of 
the country. Why could he have expected or 
wished any such effect ? He could not have 
been actuated by resentment ; for neither of 
those gentlemen have ever done him an injury. 
He could not have been moved by personal 
interest ; since his conscious inferiority, as well 
as the nature of his pursuits, remove him far 
from the possibility of being ever brought into 
colhsion with either of those gentlemen. He 
could not have been impelled by diabohcal 
envy, or the malicious agony of blasted ambi- 
tion ; since his country has aheady distinguish- 
ed him far, very far, beyond his desert. And 
of the malevolence of heart which could inten- 
tionally do a wicked, a wanton and unpro- 
voked injury, he is persuaded that either of the 
gentlemen, if they knew him, would most 
freely and cheerfully acquit him. 

If he be asked why he published the letters 
describing those characters ? He answers, 



238 THE BRITISH SPY. 

First, For the same reason that he would, if 
he could, present to the town a set of landscape 
paintings, representing all the lovely prospects 
which belong to their beautiful city ; to furnish 
them with the amusement and pleasure which 
arise from surveying an accurate picture of a 
well known original : and this implies, that he 
could not have believed himself adding new 
information as to the originals themselves. 

Secondly, He hoped that the abstracted and 
miscellaneous remarks, which were blended 
with the description of those characters, might 
not be without their use to the many literary 
young men who are growing up in Virginia. 

If the letters of the British Spy have gone 
beyond these purposes ; if they have given 
pain to the gentlemen described ; (for as to 
doing them an injury, it is certainly out of the 
question,) there is no man in the community 
disposed to regret it more sensibly than the 
man who furnished those letters for publication. 

But while honour and justice compel the 
writer of this article to give these explana- 
tions, and make these acknowledgments to 
the gentlemen immediately interested, he begs 
he may not be considered as descending to the 
meanness of begging mercy on his own " glass 



THE BRITISH SPY. 239 

house." On the contrary, the person who has 
pubhshed the poUte hint in question, is wel- 
come to commence his assault as soon as he 
pleases. He can scarcely point out one defect 
in the person, manner, or mind of this writer, 
of which he is not already conscious. And if 
he meant by his menace any thing more ; if he 
meant to insinuate a suspicion to the public, 
that the honesty, integrity, or moral purity, of 
the man who furnished the letters of the British 
Spy for publication, are assailable on any 
ground of truth ; if such was his intention he 
has intended an injury, at which this writer 
laughs in proud security ; an injury, for which 
his own heart, if it be a good one, will not for- 
give him so soon, as will the heart of the man 
whom he has attempted to injure. 

The writer of this article tenders in return 
this hint to the hinter ; that before he com- 
mences his hostile operations, he will be sure 
of his man. As to the person who really did 
furnish the British Spy — the finger of conjec- 
ture has been erroneously pointed at several who 
reside in this state. It would be unjust and 
barbarous to punish the innocent for the guilty, 
if guilt can be justly charged on the British Spy. 



240 THE BRITISH SPY. 



LETTER X. 

Richmond, December 10. 
In one of my late rides into the surrounding 
country, I stopped at a little inn to refresh my- 
self and my horse ; and, as the landlord was 
neither a Boniface, nor "mine host of the gar- 
ter," I called for a book, by way of kilHng time, 
while the preparations for my repast were going 
forward. He brought me a shattered fragment 
of the second volume of the Spectator, which 
he told me was the only book in the house, for 
" he never troubled his head about reading ;" 
and by way of conclusive proof, he further 
informed me, that this fragment, the only book 
in the house, had been sleeping unmolested in 
the dust of his mantel-piece, for ten or fifteen 
years. I could not meet my venerable country- 
man, in a foreign land, and in this humihating 
phght, nor hear of the inhuman and gothic 
contempt with which he had been treated, 
without the liveliest emotion. So I read my 
host a lecture on the subject, to which he 
appeared to pay as little attention as lie had 



THE BRITISH SPY. 241 

before done to the Spectator; and, with the 
sang froid of a Dutchman, answered me in 
the cant of the country, that he "had other fish 
to fry," and left me. 

It had been so long since I had had an op- 
portunity of opening that agreeable collection, 
that the few numbers which were now before 
me, appeared almost entirely new ; and I cannot 
describe to you, the avidity and deUght with 
which I devoured those beautiful and interest- 
ing speculations. 

Is it not strange, my dear S , that 

such a work should have ever lost an inch of 
ground ? A style so sweet and simple, and yet 
so ornamented I a temper so l^enevolent, so 
cheerful, so exhilarating ! a body of knowledge, 
and of original thought, so immense and vari- 
ous ! so strikingly just, so universally useful 1 
What person, of any age, sex, temper, calling, 
or pursuit, can possibly converse with the 
Spectator, without being conscious of imme- 
diate improvement ? 

To the spleen, he is as perpetual and never- 
failing an antidote, as he is to ignorance and 
immorality. No matter for the disposition of 
mind in which you take him up ; you catch, as 

you go along, the happy tone of spirits which 
21 



242 THE BRITISH SPY. 

prevails throughout the work ; you smile at 
the wit, laugh at the drollery, feel your mind 
cnUghtened, j^our heart opened, softened and 
refined ; and when you lay him down, you are 
sure to be in a better humour, both with your- 
self and every body else. I have never men- 
tioned the subject to a reader of the Spectator, 
who did not admit this to be the invariable 
process ; and in such a world of misfortunes, 
of cares, and sorrows, ond guilt, as this is, what 
a prize would this collection be, if it were rightly 
estimated ! 

Were I the sovereign of a nation, which 
spoke the English language, and wished my 
subjects cheerful, virtuous and enlightened, I 
would furnish every poor family in my domi- 
nions (and see that the rich furnished them- 
selves) with a copy of the Spectator ; and 
ordain that the parents or children should read 
four or five numbers, aloud, every night in the 
year. For one of the peculiar perfections of 
the work is, that while it contains such a mass 
of ancient and modern learning, so much of 
profound wisdom, and of beautiful composition, 
yet there is scarcely a number throughout tlie 
eisrht volumes, which is not level to the 
meanest capacity. Another perfection is, that 



THE BRITISH SPY. 243 

the Spectator will never become tiresome to 
any one whose taste and whose heart remain 
uncornipted. 

I do not mean that this author should be 
read to the exclusion of others ; much less that 
he should stand in the way of the generous 
pursuit of science, or interrupt the discharge of 
social or private duties. All the counsels of the 
work itself have a directly reverse tendency. 
It furnishes a store of the clearest argument 
and of the most amiable and captivating ex- 
hortiitions, " to raise the genius, and to mend 
the heart." I regret, only, that such a book 
should be thrown by, and almost entirely for- 
gotten, while the gilded blasphemies of infidels, 
and "the noontide trances" of penicious theo- 
rists, are hailed with rapture, and echoed around 
the world. For such, I should be pleased to 
see the Spectator universally substituted : and, 
throwing out of the question its morality, its 
literary information, its sweetly contagious 
serenity, and the pure and chaste beauties of 
its style ; and considering it merely as a curi- 
osity, as concentring the brilliant sports of the 
finest cluster of geniuses that ever graced the 
earth, it surely deserves perpetual attention, 
respect and consecration 



244 THE BRITISH SPY. 

There is, methinks, my S , a great 

fault in the world, as it respects this subject : 
a giddy instability, a light and fluttering vanity, 
a prurient longing after novelty, an impatience, 
a disgust, a fastidious contempt of every thing 
that is old. You will not understand me as 
censuring the progress of sound science. I am 
not so infatuated an antiquarian, nor so poor a 
philanthropist, as to seek to retard the expansion 
of the human mind. But I lament the eternal 
oblivion into which our old authors, those 
giants of literature, are permitted to sink, while 
the world stands open-eyed and open-mouthed 
to catch every modern, tinselled abortion as it 
falls from the press. In the polite circles of 
America, for instance, perhaps there is no want of 
taste, and even zeal, for letters. I have seen seve- 
ral gentlemen who appear to have an accurate, 
a minute acquaintance with the whole range of 
literature, in its present state of improvement : 
yet, you will be surprised to hear, that I have 
not met with more than one or two persons in 
this country, who have ever read the works of 
Bacon or of Boyle. They delight to saunter 
in the upper story, sustained and adorned, as it 
is, with the delicate proportions, the foliage and 
flourishes of the Corinthian order ; but they 



THE BRITISH SPY. 245 

disdain to make any acquaintance, or hold 
communion at all, with the Tuscan and Doric 
plainness and strength which base and support 
the whole edifice. 

As to lord Verulam, when he is considered 
as the father of experimental philosophy ; as 
the champion, whose vigour battered down the 
idolized chimeras of Aristotle, together with all 
the appendant and immeasurable webs of the 
brain, woven and hung upon them, by the in- 
genious dreamers of the schools ; as the hero 
who not only rescued and redeemed the world 
from all this darkness, jargon, perplexity and 
error ; but, from the stores of his own great 
mind, poured a flood of light upon the earth, 
straightened the devious paths of science, and 
planned the whole paradise, which we now 
find so full of fragrance, beauty and grandeur ; 
when he is considered, I say, in these points 
of view, I am astonished that literary gentlemen 
do not court his acquaintance, if not through 
reverence, at least through curiosity. The 
person who does so will find every period filled 
with pure and solid golden bullion : that bul- 
Uon, which several much admired posterior 
writers have merely moulded into various forms, 
21* 



245 THE BRITISH SPY. 

or beaten in^o leaf, and taught to spread its 
floating splendours to the sun. 

This insatiate palate for novelty which I have 
mentioned, has had a very striking effect on 
the style of modern productions. The plain 
language of easy conversation will no longer 
do. The writer who contends for fame, or 
even for truth, is obliged to consult the reigning 
taste of the day. Hence too often, in opposi- 
tion to his own judgment, he is led to encum- 
ber his ideas with a gorgeous load of orna- 
ments ; and when he would present to the 
public a body of pure, substantial and useful 
thought, he finds himself constrained to encrust 
and bury its utility within a dazzling case ; to 
convert a feast of reason into a concert of 
sounds : a rich intellectual boon into a mere 
bouquet of variegated pinks and blushing roses. 
In his turn he contributes to establish and 
spread wider the perversion of the public taste ; 
and thus, on a principle resembling that of 
action and reaction, the author and the public 
reciprocate the injury ; just as, in the licentious 
reign of our Charles the 2d, the dramatist 
and his audience were wont to poison each 
other. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 247 

A history of style would indeed be a curious 
and hij^hly interesting one : I mean a philoso- 
phical, as well as chronological history ; one 
which, beside marking the gradations, changes 
and fluctuations exhibited in the style of differ- 
ent ages and different countries, should open 
the regular or contingent causes of all those 
gradations, changes and fluctuations. I should 
be particularly pleased to see a learned and 
penetrating mind employed on the question: 
Whether the gradual adornment, which we 
observe in a nation's style, result from the pro- 
gress of science ; or whether there be an in- 
fancy, a youth, and a manhood, in a nation's 
sensibility, which rising in a distant age, like 
a newborn billow, rolls on through succeeding 
generations, with accumulating height and 
force, and bears along with it tKe concurrent 
expression of that sensibility, until they both 
swell and tower into the sublime — and some- 
times break into the bathos. 

The historical facts, as well as the meta- 
physical consideration of the subject, perplex 
these questions extremely ; and, as Sir Roger 
de Coverly says, " much may be said on both 
sides." For the present I shall eay nothing on 
cither ; except that from some of Mr. Blair's 



248 THE BRITISH SPY. 

remarks, it would seem that neither of thos* 
hypotheses will solve the phenomenon befon 
us. If I remember his opinion correctly, th€ 
most sublime style is to be sought in a state of 
nature ; when, anterior to the existence of 
science, the scantiness of a language forces 
a people to notice the points of resemblance 
between the great natural objects with which 
they are surrounded ; to apply to one the 
terms which belong to another ; and thus, by 
compulsion, to rise at once into simile and met- 
aphor, and launch into all the boldness of trope 
and figuie. If this be true, it would seem that 
the progress of a civilized nation toward sub- 
limity of style is perfectly a retrograde manoeu 
vre : that is, that they will be sublime accord- 
ing to the pearness of their approach to the 
primeval state of nature 

This is a curious, and to me, a bewitching 
subject. But it leads to a volume of thought, 
which is not to be condensed in a letter. I 
will remark only one extraordinary fact as it 
relates to style. The Augustan age is pro- 
nounced by some critics to have furnished the 
finest models of style, embellished to the high- 
est endurable point; and of this, Cicero is 
always adduced as the most illustrious example. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 249 

Yet it is remarkable, that seventy or eighty 
years afterwards, when the Roman style had 
become much more luxmiant, and was de- 
nounced by the critics of the day* as having 
transcended the limits of genuine ornament, 
PUny, the younger, in a letter to a friend, 
thought it necessary to enter into a formal vin- 
dication of three or four metaphors, which he 
had used in an oration, and which had been 
censured in Rome for their extravagance ; but 
which, by the side of the meanest of Curran's 
figures, would be poor, insipid and flat. Yet 
who will say that Curran's style has gone be- 
yond the point of endurance? Who is not 
pleased with its purity ? Who is not ravished 
by its sublimity. 

In England, how wide is the chasm between 
the style of Lord Verulam and that of Edmund 
Burke, or M'Intosh's introduction to his Vin- 
dices Galliccef That of the first is the plain 
dress of a (Quaker ; that of the two last the 
magnificent paraphernalia of Louis XIV. of- 
France. In lord Yerulam's day, his style was 
distinguished for its superior ornament ; and in 
this respect, it was thought impossible to sur- 

♦ See Q,uinctillian's Institutes. 



250 T^K BRITISH SPT. 

pass it. Yet Mr. Burke, Mr. M'Intosh, and the 
other fine writers of the present age, have, by 
contrast, reduced lord Yerulam's flower garden 
to the appearance of a simple cuUnary square. 

Perhaps it is for this reason, and because, aa 
you know, I am an epicure, that I am very 
much interested by lord Verulam's manner. 
It is indeed a most agreeable relief to my mind 
to turn from the stately and dazzling rhapso- 
dies of the day, and converse with this plain 
and sensible old gentleman. To me his style 
is gratifying on many accounts ; and there is 
this advantage in him, that instead of having 
three or four ideas rolled over and over again, 
like the fantastic evolutions and ever-changing 
shapes of the same sun-embroidered cloud, you 
gain new materials, new information at every 
breath. 

Sir Robert Boyle is, in my opinion, another 
author of the same description, and therefore 
an equal, if not a higher favourite with me. 
In point of ornament he is the first grade in 
the mighty space, (through the whole of which 
the gradations may be distinctly traced,) between 
Bacon and Burke. Yet he has no redundant 
verbiage ; has about him a perfectly patriarchal 
eimplicity ; and every period is pregnant with 



THE BRITISH SPY. 261 

matter. He has this advantage too over lord 
Verulam ; that he not only investigates all the 
subjects which are calculated to try the clear- 
ness, the force and the comprehension of the 
human intellect : he introduces others also, in 
handling of which he shows the masterly 
power with which he could touch the keys of 
the heart, and awaken all the tones of sensi- 
bility which belong to man. Surely, if ever a 
human being deserved to be canonized for 
great, unclouded inteUigence, and seraphic 
pm'ity and ecstasy of soul, that being was Sir 
Robert Boyle. 

When I reflect that this " pure intelligence, 
this link between men and angels," was a 
Christian, and look around upon the petty in- 
fidels and deists with Avhich the world swar7ns, 
I am lost in amazement ! Have they seen ar- 
guments against religion, which were not pre- 
sented to Sir Robert Boyle? His religious 
works show that they have not. Are their 
judgments better able to weigh those argu- 
ments than his was? They have not the 
vanity even to believe it. Is the beam of their 
judgments more steady, and less liable to be 
disturbed by passion than his? No ; for in this 
he seems to have excelled all mankind. Are 



252 THE BRITISH SPY. 

their minds more elevated and more capable of 
comprehending the whole of this great subject, 
with all its connexions and dependencies, than 
was the mind of Sir Robert Boyle ? Look at 
the men : and the question is answered. How 
then does it happen that they have been con- 
ducted to a conclusion so perfectly the reverse 
of his ? It is for this very reason ; because 
their judgments are less extricated from the 
mfluence and raised above the mists of passion : 
it is because their minds are less ethereal and 
comprehensive ; less capable than his was " to 
look through nature up to nature's God." And 
let them hug their precious, barren, hopeless 
infidelity: they are welcome to the horrible 
embrace ! May we, my friend, never lose the 
rich and inexhaustible comforts of religion. 
Adieu, my S 



THE BRITISH SPY. liS: 



The author of " An Inquirer" on the theory 

^ the earth, begs leave to offer the following 

)bservations to the publisher of " the British 

opy," in answer to some of his additional 

notes. 

When the Inquirer read, in the second letter 
of the British Spy, that " the perpetual revolu- 
tion of the earth, from west to east, has the obvi- 
ous tendency to conglomerate the loose sands of 
the sea on the eastern coast," — "that whether 
the rolUng of the earth to the east give to the 
ocean an actual counter-current to the west 
or not, the newly emerged pinnacles are 
whirled, by the earth'.s motion, through the 
waters of the deep;" and from the continued 
operation of the causes which produced them, 
that " all continents and islands will be caused, 
reciprocally to approximate ;" when he read 
these and other similar passages, he saw no 
reason to doubt, that the British Spy considered 
the ocean now, as well as formerly, affected by 

the rotation of the earth ; or, to express the 
22 



254 THE BRITISH SPY. 

same thing more correctly, that the rotatory mo* 
tion of the earth is but partially communicated 
to the ocean. This opinion, which a thousand 
facts may be brought to disprove, and which 
the favourite cosmogonist of the British Spy 
says* no man can entertain who has the least 
knowledge of physics, it was decorous to sup- 
pose, had been advanced from inadvertence. 
If the meaning of the writer were taken by the 
Inquirer in a greater latitude than was meant, 
he is not the less sorry for his mistake, because 
it was not a natural one, and was not confined 
to himself. 

But the annotator of the Spy, without say- 
ing whether the supposed current now exist or 
not, thinks the former existence of such a cur- 
rent not improbable, and puts a case by way 
of illustrating his h}^otheses. My reasoning 
on the subject, somewhat different from his, is 
briefly this : 

If the whole surface of the earth, when it 
first received its rotatory impulse, were covered 
with water, and this impulse were communl- 

* The passage in Smellie's translation of Buffon stands 
thus : but every man who has the least knowledge of phy- 
sics, must allow, that no fluid which surrounds the eartli, 
can be affected by its rotation. — Vol. I. On Regular Winds. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 256 

cated to its solid part alone, then, indeed, a 
current to the west would be produced ; and 
would contmue, until the resistance, occasioned 
by the friction of the waters, gradually commu- 
nicated the whole motion of the earth to the 
ocean. It is not easy to say, when this cur- 
rent would cease ; but it seems to me it would 
be more hkely to wear the bed of the ocean 
smooth, than to raise protuberances ; and even, 
though it were to cause sand banks, it could 
never elevate them above its own level. 

I should observe that, to avoid circumlocu- 
tion, I admit a curreyit of the west ; because 
the effect is the same, as to alluvion, whether 
the earth revolve under the waters, or the 
waters roll over the earth ; though the fact is, 
that the ocean, like the oil in the plate, in the 
experiment proposed, would have a tendency 
to remain at rest, and whatever motion it 
acquired, must be to the east, hke that of the 
earth from which it was derived. 

If we suppose a fiew solitary mountains 
to lift their heads above the circumfluous ocean, 
we may mfer, by the rules of strict analogy, 
that they would be worn away by the friction 
of the passing waters, rather than that they 
would receive any accessions of soil. 



256 THE BRITISH SPY. 

But let us suppose some ridges of mountains 
running from north to south, and of sufficient 
extent and elevation to obstruct the course of 
the waters. In this case, the sudden whirling 
of the earth to the east would force the ocean 
on its western shores, where it would accumu- 
late, until the gravity of the mass thus elevated, 
overcome the force which raised it. Then one 
vast undulation of the stupendous mass would 
take place, from shore to shore, and would 
continue until it gradually yielded to the united 
effect of friction and gravity. A comparison 
between vessels of different sizes, partly filled 
with water, might enable us to form a rational 
conjecture of the term of this oscillation ; but 
be it in one year, or many years, I think the 
effect would more probably be, an abrasion 
of the mountain, than the formation of a 
continent. 

But the postulatiim^ that the first impulse to 
the earth was communicated to its solid part 
alone, on which all these suppositions rest, is 
but a possibility : whether we suppose that the 
cause, which first whirled the earth on its axis, 
is an ascending link in nature's chain of causes, 
or the immediate act of the first Great Cause 
of all, it is not unlikely that it penetrated and 



THE SRITISH SPY. 2$7 

influenced every particle of matter, whether it 
■were solid, liquid or aeriform. 

On this subject, our suppositions are to be 
limited only by our invention. One man may 
resort to electricity, according to an alleged 
property of that fluid ; another, to magnetism ; 
a third, to the action of the sun's rays ; and a 
fourth, to a quality inherent in matter ; accord- 
ing to either of which hypotheses, no current 
could have existed. 

Monsieur de Buffbn, indeed, ascribes the 
earth's rotation to a mechanical and partial im- 
pulse, the oblique stroke of a comet ; but as, 
according to him, the earth was then one entire 
globe of melted glass, its rotatory motion must 
have been uniform, long before the ocean 
existed. 

Whoever would dispel the clouds in which 
this question is enveloped, and make it as clear 
"as the light of heaven," should indeed be mihi 
magnus Apollo : but hypotheses, of which 
nothing can be said, but that they are not im- 
possible, though they may beguile the lounger 
of a heavy hour, are little likely to further our 
knowledge of nature. In so boundless a field 
of conjectiue, with scarce one twinkhng star to 

guide us. wa can hardly hope to find, among 

22^ 



258 THE BRITISH SPY. 

the numberless tracts of error, that which singly 
leads to truth. 

When the Inquirer spoke of the general 
bouleversement which many subterranean ap- 
pearances indicated, he did not mean even to 
hint at their cause, but simply to express, as the 
word imports, the topsyturvy disorder, in which 
vegetable and marine substances are found ; the 
one far above, and the other far below, the seat 
of its original production. At the moment he 
was attempting to show, that every explana- 
tion of these phenomena was imperfect and 
premature, he hardly would have ventured to 
give one himself ; for though " we should not 
suffer ourselves to be passively fed on the pap 
of science," when we have attained our matu- 
rity, yet until we have attained it, he thinks it 
is better to be in leading-strings, than to stumble 
at every step. 

In the progress of science, I doubt whether 
gound principles are abandoned for those that 
are less true. Novelty in moral speculation, 
aided as it may be, by our passions, may daz- 
zle and mislead, but in physics, though one 
error may give place to another, when truth 
once gets possession, she holds it firm, ever 
after. Thus the theories of cosmogonists fol- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 269 

low one another, like wave obtniding upon 
^K'dive ; each demonstrating the fallacy of those 
which went before, and proved absurd in turn ; 
while the philosophy of Newton, in spite of 
the continued opposition of French academi- 
cians, and the later reveries of St. Pierre, gradu- 
ally gains universal credit and respect. The 
member of the Royal Society, who accounted 
for the trade winds by the transpiration of 
tropical sea- weed, may have had his admirers ; 
but he has not been able to shake the theory of 
Dr. Halley. If Harvey's system of generation 
had been as well supported by facts, as his dis- 
covery of the circulation of the blood, all hos- 
tility to the one, as well as the other, would 
have ended with his life. 

It certainly is not philosophical " to discard 
a theory," because it may be unsupported by 
a name, nor yet because there are other more 
recent theories. In these and many other 
general remarks, I entirely concur with the 
writer, though I do not clearly discern their 
application. 

I cannot conclude, without regretting, that I 
should be compelled to differ with a writer 
whose talents I so much admire, and whose 
sentiments I so often approve; but to borrow 



260 THE BRITISH bPY, 

a celebrated sentiment, my esteem for truth ex- 
ceeds even my esteem for the British Spy. 
Though neither of us may chance to convince 
the other, yet, if our discussion should lead 
those who have not the same parental tender- 
ness for particular hypotheses or doubts, to a 
better understanding of the subject, the light, 
that is thus elicited, will console me for the 
collision which produced it. 

October 12, 1803. 



THE END. 



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